Buying and Selling

Dairy Farm Sells for $6.2 Million XtraMSN A 235-hectare farm has sold at auction for $6,210,000 in one of the biggest dairy sales to be transacted in Canterbury.

Sales agent Geoff McBride, of Bayleys Canterbury, says the property located off Hollands Road, Greendale, 12 kilometres from Darfield and 40 kilometres southwest of Christchurch attracted strong competition at auction last week from 5 bidders. The property, which was converted to spray irrigated dairying two years ago, was purchased by another dairy farmer.

Mr McBride says the farm is on track to produce 270,000 kilograms of milk solids (kgms) this year - giving it a sale price equivalent of $23 per kgms - with the potential to increase this considerably.

"It's understocked at three cows per hectare and as P levels rise we consider it is easily capable of 300,000 kgs/ms."

The property comes with a 50-bail rotary dairy shed and a new 373 square metre, five-bedroom home.

The farm has 16 main paddocks and has been 70 per cent regressed over the past two years. It milked 580 cows last season and 690 this season.

Well-drawn water is sprayed through three Briggs 250, 8 K-Lines and 14 long lateral type irrigators.

Mr McBride says the sale price reflects the fact that the property is a superb dairy farm conversion with the best of soils, irrigation and improvements.

He says the recent slowdown in sales activity has been due more to a reduction of properties being presented for sale rather than a fall-off in demand. Demand for good quality properties is still outstripping supply.

The Greendale farm was the second $6 million-plus dairy sale Bayleys has concluded this month. It also sold a 157-hectare Waikato dairy farm near Morrinsville shortly after auction for in excess of its pass-in price of $6.5 million. The farm, on of only 132 that supplies the high-performing Tatua Co-Operative Dairy, sold for well in excess of $40 per kgms.