This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
GERRY Carlon and family have offloaded a portfolio of almond and irrigated cropping properties in the NSW Riverina’s Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area that was expected to attract more than $40 million.
Located 20 kilometres west of Griffith, at Benerembah, the portfolio spans 1,275 hectares and comprises Alasley Almonds, Mirrool Park and Tamba. It included 188 hectares of mature almond orchards and 483 hectares of fully developed irrigated cropping and support land within Alasley Almonds and Mirrool Park.
Tamba offers a further 604 hectares of fully developed irrigated cropping and support land.
There was 3,921 Murrumbidgee Irrigation Ltd delivery entitlements and 2,253 Murrumbidgee Irrigation Ltd general security water entitlements attached to Alasley Almonds and Mirrool Park as part of the sale.
Extensive irrigation infrastructure and shedding, a 1,400-tonne almond storage area and office complex were also included.
The purchaser is reportedly to be a local farming family that acquired the assets without the Murrumbidgee water entitlements.
Ray White Rural Griffith’s Peter Gerarde-Smith brokered the sale.
The Carlon family has been farming in the Benerembah are since the late 1960s, moving into almond production over a decade ago.
At the end of last year in the Riverina, goFARM Australia splashed out $120 million on almond expansion with the acquisition of three properties near Griffith that were owned by Hong Kong Stock Exchange-listed CK Life Sciences.
Across the state, 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 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.
Meanwhile, 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.
