A FORMER Inghams poultry farm on a 16.2-hectare block in the Sydney north-west growth corridor has been sold for about $4 million to a company with ties to agribusiness and property development.
The property, at Maguires Road in Maraylya, which had been marketed at between $3 million and $4 million, sold more than a week before the closure of an expressions of interest campaign run by Alex Ugarte and Tim Grosmann, of CBRE.
Mr Ugarte said while Inghams had decommissioned the farm, everything was in place for a new operator to restart operations.
The property was also advertised as a "land bank opportunity" to capitalise on the north-west Sydney growth corridor, subject to rezoning, where new housing development is booming.
The poultry farm is just 15 kilometres from the Rouse Hill Town Centre. It includes a manager's residence, poultry sheds and out buildings.
Title deeds obtained by The Australian Financial Review show a contract of sale entered into between Inghams Property Management and Mitchells Landing Pty Ltd in mid-July.
The directors of Mitchells Landing are listed as Paul Pace, whose family own and operate Pace Farm, Australia's biggest provider of eggs and egg products, and John Vassallo, director of Celestino, the property development arm of the wealthy Baiada family, who produce chicken products under the Steggies and Lilydale brands.
Last week, The Australian Financial Review reported that Celestino would launch a $4 billion master-planned housing estate on a 330-hectare site in Box Hill in the city's north-west in the coming months.
Known as The Gables, it is the first residential project to come out of the Baiadas' massive land bank, which includes more than 20,000 residential lots in NSW and Queensland acquired over more than a decade by Mr Vassallo on behalf of the family.
Inghams Enterprises, one of the country's biggest producers of chicken and turkey products, was acquired in 2014 by TPG Capital for $880 million.
