Billionaire Michael Hintze dons cotton in Wee Waa rural acquisition
Expatriate Australian billionaire Michael Hintze has added two large irrigation properties in Wee Waa, northern New South Wales, costing $14 million to his ever-expanding east coast farming portfolio.
The London-based hedge fund founder has amassed one of Australia’s fastest-growing farm portfolios, with acquisitions totalling about 50,000 hectares since 2007.
His private pension fund, MHPF, has spent about $141 million on the land and water purchases.
The latest properties Gunedra and Redcamp bought through Ray White Rural agent Bruce Gunning span 2,216 hectares of fertile floodplains adjoining the Namoi River and Pian Creek in the Wee Waa district, known as the birthplace of Australia’s cotton industry.
Hintze is the founder and senior investment Officer of CQS Management, a London-based hedge fund with assets of $US10.5 billion.
The Hintze portfolio has been accumulated and managed by Richard Taylor, a director of Growth Farms Australia. MHPF has been described as "a newly diversified agricultural force taking shape in eastern Australia" by The Land's agricultural writer, Peter Austin. It now has made 17 acquisitions in NSW and recently added two sugar cane farms in north Queensland, which marked a shift away from its weighting towards the southern NSW mixed farming of wool, prime lambs, cattle and winter cropping.
The purchases have been driven by the view that rural land in Australia now represents good value in light of the strong global demand for “soft commodities”. A key strategy of the group has been to aggregate parcels of land where possible to achieve efficiencies of scale and cross-property synergies.
Hintze's buying spree began when he spent $12.5 million for a Breadalbane property in July 2007. Despite his acquisitions Hintze is not likely to join the Australian Farm Journal's top 10 landholders, since other new players, Macquarie Group and the British private equity company Terra Firma Capital Partners, have between them spent $740 million buying vast chunks of northern Australia. Hintze's biggest purchase was the 7,700-hectare grazing property Warrane, west of Armidale, costing $22 million in late 2007.
Hintze's wealth has been estimated by Forbes magazine at $US1.4 billion in early 2011. Hintze's estimated $1.4 billion net worth has him ranked 879 in the Forbes Billioniares list, and 12th richest Australian.
Gunning says the vendors of the Wee Waa property have been involved in the cotton industry for decades.
“The vendors were an American family farm business involving 10 owners who commenced operations in 1961 and have been one of the pioneers of the modern cotton industry in Australia,” Gunning notes.
The family members, now mostly in their senior years, took the opportunity to recently sell the properties and due to the high Australian dollar are able to maximise the amount of money they’ll be able to take home.
The offering had been listed for April auction.
Gunedra and Redcamp have water entitlements from the Namoi River supported by bore water, making it one of the safest cotton farms in the district. Gunedra is 1,119 hectares of freehold land with 734 hectares of lasered irrigation fields. Redcamp is a 1,089-hectare freehold with 566 hectares of lasered irrigation fields.
Hintze’s most recent purchase was at Young in NSW.
