This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
FILIPINO business identity and property developer Romeo Roxas has roped in more than $40 million from the sale of his 559,500-hectare Northern Territory cattle station Murray Downs.
The new owners are a family of central Queensland Wagyu beef producers, headed up by Richard and Dyan Hughes and operating as Wentworth Cattle Co.
Murray Downs, located 400 kilometres north of Alice Springs, has been run to a 10,000-head Santa Gertrudis cross her plus cow followers, which form part of the listing. The property is offered on a walk-in, walk-out basis.
It has the Davenport Ranges to the north with excellent flood out, and the Amelia, Skinner and Murray Creek systems. Grazing country is soft mulga and buffel.
Improvements include the recently renovated main four-bedroom solid brick rendered homestead, three-bedroom owners’ cottage, two-bedroom workman’s cottage, eight-room workman’s quarters, governess quarters, staff community kitchen with seating for 15 people, and a station and community store with a fully equipped commercial kitchen.
Roxas bought Murray Downs alongside Epenarra Station in 2015 for over $20 million and went on to add the 275,200-hectare Pine Hill Station, before selling Epenarra in 2019 for more than $14 million.
Roxas is a director of the Philippine Veterans Bank, and president of the Green Square Properties Corp and the Green Circle Properties and Resources Inc., which have planned cities on east coast of the Philippines.
He held Murray Downs through Australian Green Properties and listed the property in July, at a time when a number of offshore investors were handing up the “for sale” sign on key Australian assets.
Chinese company Hailiang Group put up for grabs southern Queensland’s Hollymount and Mt Driven aggregation, which it acquired nine years ago for $41 million, while US private equity firm Proterra Investment Partners’ listing its One Tree broadacre cropping portfolio with hopes of around $250 million.
Last month, the Washington State Investment Board-backed Laguna Bay lobbed Border Rivers region dryland cropping Carpendale aggregation to the market with hopes of more than $90 million
Foreign investors have also been on the buy-side of recent major transactions. Canada’s Alberta Investment Management Corporation entered into an agreement to acquire the sprawling northern Western Australian Yeeda Aggregation, and NASDAQ-listed Agriculture & Natural Solutions Acquisition Corporation nabbed Australian Food and Agriculture, taking on its 225,000-hectare portfolio of NSW assets that include the birthplace of Merino sheep in a mammoth $780 million deal.
Meanwhile, the Hughes family are selling their 18,970-hectare Tabletop Station near Collinsville, and the 3,613-hectare Eleanor Farm near Kilcummin.
