NZ farm group buys Lochinver Station

See also: Shy owners of Lochinver Station revealed

Lochinver Station near Taupo has been bought by a privately owned New Zealand farming group after the government vetoed its sale to a Chinese company.

Rimanui Farms Ltd, which is understood to be associated with the late Peter Spencer’s family, has bought the 13,843ha sheep and beef station, according to Bayleys Real Estate, which brokered the deal.

Rimanui will take ownership in March next year from Stevenson Group. No sale price has been disclosed.

The deal comes after the government last month announced it had turned down an Overseas Investment Office application from Chinese company Shanghai Pengxin’s subsidiary Pure 100 to buy the property.

Pure 100 had entered into an agreement to purchase the property for $88 million before it was denied.

Stevenson Group chief executive Mark Franklin says proceeds from the sale will be reinvested in the company’s core businesses of mining, quarrying, concrete and associated investments around these industries, including the development of a major new industrial subdivision around its large quarrying operations in Drury, South Auckland.

Mr Franklin estimates the staged development of over 300ha at Drury will take 15 years and is expected to create more than 8000 jobs. 

Lochinver Station was bought in 1958 by the late Sir William Stevenson, founder of Stevenson Group, after prompting from his son, the late Ross Stevenson, who had observed the property during his hunting expeditions in the area.

The property, which has a capital valuation for rating purposes of $70.6 million, is a sheep and beef breeding and finishing and dairy support farm located on the Rangitaiki Plains, 32km from Taupo and 92km from Napier, with a carrying capacity in excess of 100,000 stock units.

The station also has three airstrips, 22 houses which accommodate the families of 20 permanent staff, a staff recreation centre, 91km of pumice roads, six cattle yards, three woolsheds plus multiple other farm buildings, a lake, and a recreational hunting block.

Pete Stratton, of Bayleys' Taihape office, says Rimanui Farms, formed in the 1980s, is a very experienced and successful pastoral farming group, with other large scale farming operations including Erewhon Station also located in the central North Island.

“The company’s focus is solely on sheep, beef, and forestry, conservatively farmed for long-term productivity and growth. It has significant long-term experience in managing properties of Lochinver’s size and scale,” he says.

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