This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
ONE of Australia’s biggest dairy operations – Chinese billionaire Xianfeng Lu’a Van Dairy company in Tasmania’s north-west – has been put up for sale after a major supply contract was cut earlier this year.
On offer is the 9,500 hectares of farmland at Circular Head, including 4,207 hectares of dairy area, making up the nearly 1827-established Woolnorth farming aggregation. It includes eight rotary dairies, more than 10,300 megalitres of water entitlements, as well as seven homes and a director’s lodge, a workers’ accommodation block and outbuildings and sheds.
The buyer will also have first rights to purchase the remaining livestock and machinery, the Van Diemen’s Land Company name and archives, and grazing leases on the Studland and Bluff wind farms.
Van Dairy lost a 25-million-litre contract with Fonterra earlier this year due to what the dairy giant said were unresolvable commercial factors. Van Dairy culled 700 cows from the herd as a result.
Lu paid $280 million in 2016 to take control of the Van Diemen’s Land Company and its dairies from New Zealand’s Tasman Agriculture, through his company that was then named Moon Lake Investments. At the time, the properties totalled around 19,000 hectares, and VDL was Australia’s largest single milk supplier.
Since then, Van Dairy sold 2,200 hectares across 11 “outside the gate” farms to Melbourne-based Prime Value Asset Management in 2021 for $62.5 million, before selling another 6,000 hectares later in the same year to Angus cattle breeder Tim Roberts-Thomson, and then last month sold another 700-hectare farm to Prime Value’s Prime Dairy fund for $15 million.
Toby Maguire from Nutrien Harcourts has the listing.
“It has been an honour to be the owner and custodian of one of Australia’s most important historic agricultural properties,” Lu said in a statement.
“Since 2016, I have been proud to partner with the local community to build a successful dairy farming operation.”
