Meat magnates buy SA’s Mt Schanck station
The Thomas family, which operates Australia’s largest fully family-owned meat-processing company, has snapped up the iconic Mt Schanck station in South Australia’s southeast for more than $50 million.
The station, dating back to 1861, last changed hands in 2005 when the late AFL and Essendon Football Club chairman Ron Evans and his wife Andrea bought the property, for about half the price.
His family ran the sheep and cattle station, adding significant value in its dozen years of ownership, and now father and son Chris and Darren Thomas appear set to take up the historic property.
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Their Thomas Foods International has annual revenue of more than $1 billion with land holdings across Australia and processing plants in SA, NSW and Queensland.
The company has also invested in the food sector in the US and other international markets.
Mt Schanck station in South Australia.
The working Mt Schanck station also sports a four-bedroom 1864 homestead, set in manicured gardens, that drew in a broad field of bidders for the 2870ha Mt Schanck landholding just outside Mt Gambier. CBRE Agribusiness’ Danny Thomas and Phil Schell were contracted to market the property in October, which was the first time it was offered to the open market.
But the Thomas family bought the property on a walk-in walk-out basis a week before the campaign was due to close. Mt Schanck includes close to 5000 megalitres of groundwater entitlement.
The sale also included more than 2000 Angus cows with calves and heifer replacements, along with about 2500 composite ewes with lambs at foot, as well as plant and equipment. Thomas says the property’s scale and prominence attracted strong buyer interest from all areas, but particularly from wealthy local families and family offices.
Mt Schanck station spans more than 2800ha.
“Marking South Australia’s largest agribusiness transaction in several years, Mt Schanck represented an outstanding opportunity to acquire an investment-scale asset that has played an important part in the history of Australian agriculture,” Thomas says.
The Evans family bought the station in an off-market deal from the Clarke family, which had owned Mt Schanck for more than 140 years, having purchased it from the Arthur brothers of Van Diemen’s Land in 1861.
About 700ha of Mt Schanck has been developed to centre pivot irrigation and used for lucerne-based pastures, fodder cropping and hay production, as well as being leased to growers of potatoes and other cash crops.
This article originally appeared on www.theaustralian.com.au/property.
