Tender date extended for Crafar farms

One of the Crafar farms. Photo / Christine Cornege

The date for tenders to be lodged for the Crafar portfolio of farms has been pushed back to give prospective buyers time to do due diligence on the properties.

Bayleys marketing agent Richard Graham said the decision was made to extend the close-off date by two weeks to July 7 because some of the information prospective buyers needed to evaluate the properties was not available as early as they would have liked.

Receivers for the farms announced last month they had signed a conditional sale agreement with May Wang's UBNZ - which is 80 per cent owned by New Zealand-based UBNZ Trustee Ltd and 20 per cent by Natural Dairy (NZ) Holdings Ltd - to purchase the farms.

The sale is subject to OIO approval and the absence of a better offer.

The Chinese-backed company fronting the bid has yet to relodge its application for OIO approval of the farms.

The OIO told Natural Dairy in April it needed more information about its proposed New Zealand acquisitions before it could bgin processing the application.

It has yet to see the re-submitted application, together with the correct application fee, which is $22,000 per transaction.

The OIO works within a 50 working day timeframe to process applications and UBNZ's failure to resubmit its application in a timely way would slow down their proposed deal to purchase the farms, the office said.

Wang's PR representative Bill Ralston told nzherald.co.nz that UBNZ would not be resubmitting its application to the office until tenders closed, because environmental reports still needed to be completed on the farms.

This could take another couple of weeks, he said.

Robert Parker of law firm Chapman Tripp said it was possible the company may also be waiting to see what other offers were tabled.

"Commercially the question of whether they (UBNZ) get OIO consent is up in the air. It's certainly not a fait accompli. I would've thought if you can sell it to a Kiwi for less, you would look at that seriously."

Graham said interest in the properties was strong and a number of parties had indicated they would bid for the portfolio.

Most of that interest had come from local buyers, he said.

"We will just need to wait and see whether the tenders are at the right level and the terms and conditions are acceptable."

Ralston said UBNZ was confident about its bid because it was a premium price in the current market.

State-owned company Landcorp said it was currently doing the "number crunching" for a possible bid on the properties, but would not be paying over the odds for them.

Parker said the receivers may prefer to sell the farms to a New Zealand bidder for a smaller amount.

KordaMentha, receivers for the farms, said whether a delay in submitting an application might affect a possible sale if a lower, cash offer that did not require OIO approval came in was not up for debate.

"We have a better offer clause and we will just see where we end up at the end of the process," spokesperson Brendon Gibson said.

The Crafar portfolio incorporates 13 dairy farms and three drystock grazing properties, across nearly 8000 hectares in the central and western North Island.