Laundy family doubles down with $47m purchase of Port Macquarie pub
The Rich List Laundy family has teamed up again with Port Macquarie hospitality operator Alistair Flower to buy the Tacking Point Tavern in the NSW Mid North coastal town for about $47 million.
The family headed by patriarch Arthur Laundy paired with Flower Hotels head Mr Flower – the partner for their $25 million March acquisition of the town’s Mercure Centro Hotel – to secure the 6700 square metre pub next to the Lighthouse Plaza Shopping Centre.
“We recently acquired the Mercure Hotel in Port Macquarie with Alistair, and look forward to furthering our family’s relationship with him via this next exciting purchase,” Mr Laundy said.
“We will continue to look at opportunities both in capital cities and in regional centres in order to grow our family business, and to leverage the experience and scale we’ve built over three generations.”
The acquisition is the latest in a string of deals in Port Macquarie, at the mouth of the Hastings River, and follows surging commercial and residential values due to the influx of people from cities during the pandemic. More than $2 billion-worth of pubs – a record – changed hands in 2021.
Pubs offer attractive core investment fundamentals such as being on large sites in sought-after metropolitan and regional locations that underpin capital value growth.
They also provide steady and growing rental income through long “set and forget” triple net leases to quality tenants who will often spend millions to upgrade and improve the venues to attract patrons.
The Tacking Point Tavern offered an efficient reconfiguration, onsite parking and was strategically located adjacent to a retail precinct, said HTL Property National Director Dan Dragicevich, who marketed the property with colleague Andrew Jolliffe. He declined to comment on the sale price.
The deal is also the second in quick succession for former Rich Lister Peter Mattick and the family of his late business partner Phil Salter, who late last month sold the Port Macquarie Hotel for a NSW north coast record $57 million to an unidentified trade buyer.
“I’ve admired the successful way in which the Mattick family and their partners have conducted various successful businesses over the years, and they have been an absolute pleasure to deal with regarding this transaction,” Mr Laundy said.
The Mattick-Salter Taphouse Group still owns the Beach House restaurant attached to Port Macquarie’s Rydges Hotel, as well as the Chinderah Tavern overlooking the Tweed River in Chinderah and the Kingscliff Beach Hotel in the northern NSW town of the same name.
The Laundy family isn’t the only group trying to acquire regional pub assets in the pandemic era.
Last week a syndicate of NSW publicans headed by Newcastle-based Nick Quinn snapped up the Manning River Hotel in Taree on the NSW Mid North Coast for about $20 million. It was the second Taree hotel the Quinn syndicate acquired after purchasing the Royal Hotel earlier last year.
