Hilton hotel in $80m mortgage deal

Overseas Investment Office approval was needed for the Hilton Hotel deal. Photo / NZME

Mortgage interests over Queenstown's luxury Hilton Hotel have been sold in an $80.5 million deal involving Chinese businesses.

The Overseas Investment Office gave consent for the transaction in the assets of the hotel, set into a sloping site at Kawarau Falls near the alpine retreat's airport.

Details of the decision approved on February 10 were released yesterday.

"This is a retrospective application which relates to the applicant's acquisition of interests in various mortgages secured over the Kawarau Falls development which includes the Queenstown Hilton. The owners of the property are currently in receivership," the office said. China's Hongsheng Tao can sell the assets to New Wish Investment, jointly owned by Rose and Zhaobai Jiang of China.

Jobs, increased export receipts, additional investment for development purposes and walking assets were benefits cited for New Zealand.

Approval was needed because the land was classified as sensitive.

In another deal, Ferrovial Services Australia, 58 per cent Spanish owned, got consent for a $452.1 million deal involving many different sites which it bought from existing shareholders in Australian and United States-owned Broadspectrum Ltd.

T&G Global, which is 73.07 per cent German-controlled, got consent to buy 17.3ha of Haumoana land in Hawkes Bay from Endsleigh Cottages of New Zealand.

The Canadian government's Hammond Dairy Farm got consent to buy 386ha of Waikato land for an undisclosed sum.

Trig Hill Road, owned by Australia's Gull New Zealand, got consent to buy 3.7ha of land at 315 Wainui Rd, Silverdale to develop a Gull service station. The sum involved was suppressed.

US-based Rayonier Canterbury got consent to buy sensitive land via up to 100 per cent of the shares of Matariki Forestry Group in a $191.4 million deal. Australia's Wairarapa Estate got consent to buy land in the Wairarapa and Masterton areas for commercial forestry plantations but the amount of money was withheld.

China's Ming Gu got consent for a $2.3 million land deal at Lake Hawea near Wanaka.

American-controlled Kerrytown Road Orchards also got consent for a $1.3 million deal to buy 20.2ha of land at 156 Kerrytown Rd outside Timaru to grow apples.