This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
BLUE-ribbon Tasmanian estate and lamb production farm Logan is for sale for the first time in more than 70 years, in one of the Apple Isle’s biggest agricultural and commercial property offerings of 2024.
Located 20 minutes from Launceston and 10 minutes from Launceston Airport, Logan is a 2,683-hectare irrigated and dryland cropping and grazing operation at Evandale in the Northern Midlands region. It includes 602 hectares of centre pivot irrigation, large catchment dams with a 2,200 megalitre capacity, with an additional 600 megalitre water licence.
Additional land has been earmarked for irrigation development that would enhance production.
Agency LAWD has the listing, and told Australian Property Journal that circa $50 million is expected for Logan. Interest is likely to come from domestic and international corporate farming groups or institutional investors, as well as existing landholders seeking expansion opportunities and high net worth individuals looking to secure a “showpiece” asset.
LAWD’s Danny Thomas said properties of this scale rarely came to market in the tightly held Evandale district.
Logan has only had three owners since it was first settled in the early 1800s. The Peltzer family have been custodians since the 1950s and have developed it into very successful and progressive prime lamb operation.
Vendor, Michael Peltzer, said irrigated white clover and brassicas are grown as fodder for Logan’s high-performance composite prime lamb flock.
Logan achieves weight gains of up to 430 grams per head per day in lambs on the irrigated fodder crops. It joins at seven months of age and this year had only 4% dry in the maidens and 1.4% in the mixed age ewes.
The pasture fed, antibiotic-free lamb is sold throughout Australia as part of the Coles Graze Tasmanian Grassfed Lamb brand, and Logan has an alternative processing plant just 20 minutes away.
“Given Logan’s highly secure water, fertile soils and excellent climatic conditions, the property could lend itself to a broad spectrum of agricultural pursuits including intensive cropping, horticulture, grazing and dairying,” Thomas said.
The property boasts an entirely gravity-fed irrigation system, with a network of strategically placed dams, eliminating the requirement for pumping.
In 2021 the Peltzer family – Angus, his sister Clare and their parents, Michael and Julie – installed the first Perkinz ShearMaster shearing shed in Australia, a New Zealand product designed as a race system that delivers sheep to the shearer, bypassing the need for shearers physically move the sheep to their stands.
The five-stand ShearMaster shed has 1,100-head capacity and has increased throughput by 20% and shortened shearing time.
Other infrastructure includes 240-tonne of silo storage, a 70-tonne fertiliser bunker, and a large 10-bay Zincalume shed with concrete floor.
The historic circa 1880s Logan homestead comprises five bedrooms, three-and-a-half bathrooms and multiple living areas, and features a traditional English garden with a spectacular entrance avenue of 130 oak trees, all more than 100 years old.
The homestead features expansive vistas across the Rose Rivulet and waterfalls, Jeffries Creek and surrounding rural land.
Further accommodation includes four dwellings, shearers quarters and a hunting lodge.
“It is time for our family to move on. We’ve developed Logan a lot and we’re very proud of that, and there is still scope for further development on the property,” Claire Peltzer said.
Earlier this year, one of Australia’s biggest dairy operations – Chinese billionaire Xianfeng Lu’a Van Dairy company in Tasmania’s north-west – was put up for sale after a major supply contract was cut. Van Dairy also sold a neighbouring 700-hectare farm to Prime Value for $15 million.
A year earlier, the Roberts-Thomson family’s TRT Pastoral paid $120 million for part of the Van Dairy portfolio, which followed investment company Prime Value buying another portion of the portfolio earlier in 2021 for $62.5 million.
Hot on the heels of this year’s Van Dairy offering, the Greenham Group put blue-ribbon Westmore, optimised for beef or dairy production, and also in the state’s north-west, up for sale with expectations of over $70 million.
Late in 2022, US-based private equity firm Proterra Investment Partners netted more than $100 million from the sale of the historic mixed enterprise property Vaucluse Estate in Tasmania’s midlands. A superannuation fund based in New Zealand has acquired the 4,448-hectare mixed merino and cropping property, which doubled in size during its eight years of ownership by Proterra.
