Pyengana Dairy and Craigmoore farm snapped by Victorian billionaire

Pyengana Dairy and the land it is on have been sold to Victorian billionaire Anthony Hall, alongside the Perth-based Fogarty family and Pendulum Group.

Artisanal Market Pty Ltd, a new entity the Pendulum Group helped Mr Hall set up, bought the cheese business and about 38ha of the 265ha robotic dairy farm in December.

TasFoods had previously said in August that it was selling the Pyengana Dairy business for $2 million.

An entity associated with Mr Hall then bought the remainder of the farm.

TasFoods had leased the 265ha Craigmoore dairy farm from Jon and Lyndall Healey, but following the sale of the Pyengana Dairy business, the property was put on the market.

Elders Associate Director, Head of Rural Sales - Tasmania, Lochie Dornauf, said it had been quoting offers in excess of $5 million, which it achieved.

“It received a lot of interest, as you could possibly imagine, with a brand as iconic as Pyengana’s nature,” Mr Dornauf said.

“We ended up, funnily enough, settling on the purchaser of the dairy business, so they interwined that into one particular brand and have significantly large plans to scale up the business to potentially where it was previously.”

Mr Dornauf said a lot of generationally-held agricultural holdings have been listed for sale recently.

“A lot of those have been purchased by landowners within the vicinity - within a 20 to 40 kilometre radius.

“But interestingly, the other half of the purchaser pool is coming from interstate.

“We’ve seen Sydney investors purchase properties out in the north-east and put on a share farm; we’ve seen a number of West Australians acquire dairy farms.”

With the mainland often plagued by dry conditions, Mr Dornauf said Tasmanian farmland was appealing to buyers.

“We are extremely fortunate that when we go through a drought, we reference it as a green drought.

“We are significantly underpinned by irrigation infrastructure that’s been largely intensified when the schemes came into place more than 15 years ago.

“I think the fundamentals around dairy farming align with the opportunities in Tasmania and our climate.”