This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
US-based private equity firm Proterra Investment Partners has netted more than $100 million from the sale of the historic mixed enterprise property Vaucluse Estate in Tasmania’s midlands, in one of the Apple Isle’s largest-ever property transactions.
It is believed 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.
Vaucluse includes the heritage-listed 10-bedroom homestead originally constructed in 1830 as a four-storey brick and stucco building and which was renovated in 1940, as well as a circa-1832 five-bedroom homestead, manager’s residence, two cottages and an office.
Under the ownership of the Mackinnon family, who lived at Vaucluse from the 1880s to the 1960s, the estate developed a reputation as a leading Australian Corriedale sheep stud.
Currently, Vaucluse is used for a double cropping system and has high-yielding crops including potatoes, poppies, carrot seeds and hemp. Cereal, oilseed, and legume crops are run in conjunction with grazing sheep and cattle.
There is nearly nine kilometres of direct frontage to the South Esk River and Vaucluse has more than 9,000 megalitres of water storage and an annual water entitlement of more than 15,000 megalitres, despite the region receiving not much more than 500mm in annual rainfall.
LAWD managed the sale.
Vaucluse was part of $400 million worth of assets that Proterra listed for sale in March as it looked to bring forward its 10-year exit strategy from Australian agricultural investments.
However, it has since withdrawn the two other aggregations. They included One Tree, and spanning 23,954 hectares and 21 holdings in the Goondiwindi and Jandowae districts in Queensland and North Star in northern NSW, as well as the Racecourse portfolio that encompasses three aggregations and 14,425 hectares in Queensland’s Clairview and Mackay regions.
The listings had been spurred by Proterra’s $360 million sale of the Corinella Group of properties in Victoria and South Australia last year. The 22,500-hectare portfolio was snapped up by 27 different Australian purchasers.
In Tasmania last year, In one of the bigger deals the state has seen, the Roberts-Thomson family’s TRT Pastoral paid $120 million for part of the Van Dairy portfolio in the state’s north-west Tasmania, which followed investment company Prime Value buying another portion earlier in the year for $62.5 million.
The Apple Isle’s biggest-ever commercial property transaction took place at the end of last year when super fund Spirit Super forked out $330 million to the Schwartz family for the Parliament Square mixed use development in central Hobart.
