Mormons broaden horizons with $38m NSW farm deal
The agricultural investment arm of the Utah-based Mormon Church is extending its footprint in Australian farmland, acquiring a cropping aggregation in central western NSW for $38 million.
The purchase from ASX-listed Duxton Farms this month is the latest in a series of big moves by Alkira Farms, a subsidiary of Farmland Reserve, which is the agricultural investment arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with billions of dollars worth of holdings across North America, South America, Europe and Australia.
Its most recent addition is the 6000-hectare Kentucky aggregation, which had been earmarked for divestment by Duxton as part of a shift away from dryland cropping. LAWD’s Danny Thomas and Patrick Kerr brokered the deal.
The transaction includes 48 megalitres’ worth of stock and domestic water entitlements, with the remaining 423 hectares and 1463 megalitres of Jemalong Irrigation General Security surface water to be retained within the Duxton portfolio.
Handling business at the Australian end for the Mormon Church is agricultural asset manager Warakirri, which is managing Alkira Farms through its new cropping business, Solterra, led by investment director Adrian Goonan.
The Kentucky purchase will form part of a new aggregation totalling about 10,000 hectares of farmland, suited to broadacre cropping of cereals, canola and pulse. South of Forbes in NSW, the aggregation has been dubbed “Coolana”.
“We’re confident in Coolana’s future as a productive broadacre cropping aggregation under Solterra’s capable, proven management,” said Salt Lake City-based Farmland Reserve chief executive Doug Rose, in a statement.
Solterrra’s Goonan said the Forbes aggregation was the next step in a strategy to build a diversified portfolio of high-quality cropping assets at Warakirri’s new platform.
It’s also the next instalment for the growing presence in Australian corporate agriculture by the Mormons’ Alkira Farms. Last year, it outlaid more than $300 million to acquire southern Queensland property Worral Creek, which has about 26,000 hectares of cropping farmland, from retiring cotton growers Robert and Jennie Reardon.
Earlier this month, Alkira Farms bought up the North Starr Aggregation, a near 6000-hectare section of the much larger One Tree portfolio that Proterra Investments put to the market last year with hopes of $250 million.
The Mormon Church has accumulated an investment portfolio worth $US206 billion ($340 billion), according to the latest estimates.
