The combination of a good wet season and record high cattle prices is proving irresistible for some recent owners of big cattle stations in northern Australia.
Balfour Downs and adjoining Wandanya stations in Western Australia's Pilbara are on the market with 634,004 hectares of pastoral lease and 16,000 Brahman/Droughtmaster cross cattle included in the sale.
The sale comes hot on the heels of Gina Rinehart's enormous offering of cattle stations across northern Australia announced on the weekend.
Ms Rinehart is selling stations in Western Australia and the Northern Territory covering some 1.876 million hectares in what is believed the biggest single agricultural portfolio ever to be offered up in Australia.
The price tag for the offering is believed to be around $300 million.
This latest sale is the Pilbara stations both owned by Chinese ball bearing billionaire Xingfa Ma.
He bought Balfour Downs/Wandaya for a reported $18 million in 2014.
He has invested in the herds and new infrastructure including newly built homestead, staff quarters, sheds and a 3000 head cattle yards
Today the stations are expected to sell for between $30-40 million.
In 2020, he sold the Wollogorang and Wentworth cattle stations in the Northern Territory and Queensland, which he bought in 2015, for about $47 million.
They are believed to have sold for $53 million.
He still owns the 8000ha Emu Downs Station at Cervantes and Ferngrove Vineyards in Western Australia.
Mr Ma's Australian operations are managed by TBG Agri Holding Limited, an Australian subsidiary of Tianma Bearing Group in China.
Expressions of interest in Balfour Downs and Wandanya close with Ray White's Bruce Douglas on Thursday, April 1.
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Chris McLennan
ACM national rural property writer based in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria. Career journalist. Multi award winner.
ACM national rural property writer based in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria. Career journalist. Multi award winner.
