The push to buy Australian farmland and buy into agribusinesses continues to grow, with one report showing an overall jump of $1.9 billion in proposed agricultural investment, year-on-year.
Chinese investors will spend nearly $2.5 billion in agriculture and $1.7 billion in financial assets. In 2014, those were numbers were $32 million and $51 million respectively.
Chinese fertilizer producer Hubei Xinyangfeng has secured its first allotment of farmland outside of China, after it purchased a farm in southern New South Wales, Australia.
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is in advanced talks to buy a stake in Miner and commodity trader Glencore Plc's agricultural business, which has farming operations covering 270,000ha in Argentina, Australia, Kazakhstan, Russia and the Ukraine.
A new register of agricultural land will not be made public despite the Government's promise to provide more transparency over foreign investment in Australian farms.
The funds will acquire farms and farmland assets, including permanent crops, arable, and pastoral farmland, and lease to experienced operators across the focused geographical regions of Australia and New Zealand.
While most of the big corporate money has been falling over itself to buy into Australia's largest landowner, S. Kidman & Co, Rifa has quietly bought a total of seven properties in the last few months.
The Qatar backed agricultural land and food producing company Hassad has defended its financial record in Australia following a report which showed its property company had never made a profit.
The four farms in the ‘macadamia capital of Australia’ cover 545 ha across four adjoining farms with 109,000 mature trees and were put up for sale in 2013 by one of the largest institutional managers of agricultural real estate in the US, Hancock Farm Company.
“I find it peculiar that a nation that is the venue for so much flow of funds from overseas to invest in our agricultural assets is not the same venue for Australian super funds to invest in,” ag minister Barnaby Joyce says.
Les Chinois ne se contentent plus d'acheter les produits alimentaires australiens dont ils raffolent : des investisseurs chinois acquièrent des fermes, dont les plus grandes et les plus anciennes de l'île continent.
Hassad Australia, the $469 million agricultural land company owned by Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, has delivered a $3.46 million loss and is yet to make a profit since beginning in Australia in 2010.
