Landcorp’s bid for the Crafar farms has been rejected by the receivers.
Receivers Michael Stiassny and Brendon Gibson of KordaMentha confirmed today that over 50 offers were submitted on all or parts of the portfolio from a range of buyers.
They were pleased with the strength of the offers, however Landcorp was not among the preferred tenders, they said in a brief statement.
Good.
The SOE should not be competing with private businesses and individuals in land acquisition and it should be gradually reducing its landholding, not increasing it.
As I said here and here, the $1668.7m it has invested in farms returned only $10 million by way of a dividend to the public coffers last year.
That capital would give a better return for agriculture and the country as a whole if it was spent in areas such as research and initiatives to encourage more students in agriculture and related fields.
Homepaddock 
To be completely fair, I’d like to reserve judgment until I see the figures for the June 2010 year.
The 2009 accounts I see for most clients show trading losses due to high bought in feed costs during a drought year (Among other things.)
It is pretty obvious Landcorp is being used politically as a land bank for up coming Maori claims and I’m not sure how they are supposed to make a return on some of that stuff.
LikeLike
Adolf if you follow the link and look at the last few years, the return wasn’t much better.
LikeLike
“The SOE should not be competing with private businesses and individuals in land acquisition”
Solid Energy has bought huge swathes of excellent farmland in Southland. They intend to destroy it entirely. Not a whisper of protest from the farming community. Seems they don’t value the land.
LikeLike
“The SOE should not be competing with private businesses and individuals in land acquisition”
There every chance that its “Mission accomplished”, ie, to get the bidding up.
JC
LikeLike
Homepaddock and Gravedodger
FYI (my farming credentials 🙂
http://robertguyton.blogspot.com/2010/07/sheepy.htm
LikeLike