BILLIONAIRE retail king Brett Blundy is looking to buy two huge cattle stations in the Northern Territory owned by Macquarie Group's Paraway Pastoral in a deal worth around $100 million.
Mr Blundy, whose wealth is estimated by the BRW Rich List to be $1.09 billion, already has a significant investment in agriculture to add to his retail operations such as Bras N Things, Adairs, Diva and the soon-to-float real estate investment trust, the Aventus Retail Property Fund.
But like other tycoons, he is extending into investment agriculture, backed by confidence in the demand from Asia.
Australian business people including retailer Gerry Harvey, former Woolworths boss Paul Simons and a string of billionaires including Gina Rinehart, Andrew Forrest and Kerry Stokes have been buying into agriculture this year.
Mr Blundy is looking to purchase Paraway's Walhallow and Cresswell Downs stations which cover 1 million hectares across the Barkly Tablelands.
The stations border two other cattle properties in which Mr Blundy is already invested, Beetaloo and Mungabroom, which also cover more than 1 million hectares.
Mr Blundy did not return calls and Macquarie declined to comment.
Rough estimates of the number of cattle on the Walhallow and Creswell Downs stations are 60,000 head.
Such northern cattle properties are valued on how many head of cattle they can run, known as a beast area, as opposed to how many hectares they span. As such, a herd of 60,000 based on a price of $1000 per beast area would place a value on the land of at least $60 million. The cattle are likely to be valued at more than $40 million.
The Walhallow and Cresswell Downs stations are now known as just Walhallow.
Macquarie purchased the aggregation from cattle baron Peter Hughes in 2009 as part of a larger portfolio including Davenport Downs station and Armraynald. That purchase was priced at $169 million.
If Mr Blundy's deal goes ahead at $100 million it will show a big increase in values and set the cattle station industry alight.
Chinese investors have spent a quickfire $120 million in the past two months buying rural properties across Australia and the signs are that the buying spree is only the beginning, with more than $1 billion worth of deals in play including S. Kidman & Co's portfolio and Consolidated Pastoral.
But at the same time, some of Australia's leading business men and women have also been buying in the bush.
In the past six months, Kerry Stokes bought a 3000-hectare station on South Australia's Kangaroo Island, significantly boosting his agricultural holdings with partner Peter Murray. And Gerry Harvey has bought into a 2000-hectare Coomboona Holsteins property in Victoria, one of the country's largest dairy farms and his first foray into the dairy industry.
Andrew Forrest and Gina Rinehart, both long-time investors in agribusiness, have also been expanding their non-mining empires. Last year, Forrest's private company Minderoo bought Western Australia's largest beef processor, Harvey Beef, while Gina Rinehart's bought a cattle property near Dubbo and dairy assets. Macquarie's Paraway is one of Australia's top five landholders. It staved off a potential fund management takeover play this year after delivering a $23 million profit for the 2014 year - its first since 2011 - on the back of stronger cattle prices and increased land and water values.
