This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
A family-owned farming business and its 5,100 hectares of land across three states has been put to the market for the first time, with hopes of fetching more than $200 million.
The Mulgowie Farming Company Portfolio represents a vertically integrated supply chain of predominantly corn and green bean production, supplying all central wholesale markets and national supermarkets, from five prime farming aggregations on the eastern seaboard.
Established by the Emerick family 70 years ago as a dairy cattle business in Queensland’s Lockyer Valley, Mulgowie Farming Company has grown to now incorporate primary processing and grading, packaging, value-adding, sales and marketing and distribution, with a client base including a number of major retailers.
Mulgowie Farming Company operates across northern and southern Queensland, northern NSW and south-east Victoria. It grows baby corn, broccoli, capsicum and pumpkin on an opportunity basis, and has successfully produced potatoes, onions, tomatoes, capsicums, cucurbits, brassicas, leafy greens, sugarcane, cotton, cereals, fodder crops, legumes and tree crops.
The listing is with LAWD. Agent Danny Thomas said the presented investors an opportunity to secure a “renowned horticultural powerhouse”.
“Mulgowie Farming Company is an icon in Australian horticulture and operates under a commercial trading structure with a professional management team of more than 500 people and an external, scalable network of 50 growers in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria,” Thomas said.
He said the portfolio’s current land and water resources exceed the existing processing footprint, meaning there are opportunities to expand into other key categories for year-round production. The portfolio comprises 5,100 hectares, of which 3,100 hectares is developed to prime OptiSurface laser levelled irrigated cropping.
Current combined water usage and storage across the Portfolio’s national network comprises 25,000 megalitres, with expansion plans for an additional 7,000 megalitres.
The company’s processing capacity of up to 90,000 tonnes per annum is supported by grading, sorting, packing, processing and value-adding facilities with associated cool rooms and refrigeration.
The largest of the portfolio’s five aggregations is the Bowen Aggregation in North Queensland, spanning 3,100 hectares over 13 properties within an 11-kilometre radius. There are 1,600 hectares developed to sub-surface drip line, processing facilities, substantial water entitlements and plans including 4,000 megalitres in additional water harvesting licenses.
Also in North Queensland is the Mulgowie Aggregation of four non-contiguous properties within a three-kilometre radius, including 280 hectares with 163 hectares developed for irrigation and processing facilities, and an additional 474 hectares of irrigation land is leased,
and the Home Hill Aggregation comprising two properties referred to as Kirknie Home Farm Aggregation and Ted Walsh Farm Aggregation, made up of 1,200 hectares. Of that, 424 hectares is developed to irrigation, and there is 3,514 megalitres of water allocations from the Burdekin Basin and 150 hectares earmarked for additional irrigation expansion.
The portfolio also includes the Glen Innes Aggregation of 245 hectares over three properties in northern NSW, including grading and processing facilities and 757 megalitres of water licences, and the Boisdale Aggregation at Maffra in Victoria’s Gippsland region, featuring a state-of-the-art processing facility and 2,271 megalitres of water licences.
The offering is one of the bigger agricultural and farming real estate opportunities in recent times. Sheep and cattle enterprise Paraway Pastoral Company has just offloaded its 14,400-hectare Borambil Station in NSW’s Central West, for which $60 million was expected, and marking the second sale of three properties it lobbed to the market last year with expectations of $180 million combined.
ASX-listed Duxton Farms has just announced it is offloading its large-scale NSW South West Slopes dryland cropping property Timberscombe for $70 million to Altora Ag, the cropping arm of Canadian pension fund PSP Investments, while AAM Investment Group has offloaded its 14,074-hectare Sunshine Farms mixed-farming aggregation in the Lachlan Valley – which was tipped to net more than $90 million – to the world’s largest farmland investor, the US Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America and College Retirement Equities Fund’s Nuveen Natural Capital.
