Foreign investors snap up $2.1b of New Zealand assets
Foreigners got consent to buy $2.1 billion of New Zealand assets in the first five months of the year.
The Overseas Investment Office (OIO) considers applications on land classed as rural, sensitive or worth $100 million plus.
The OIO has just released its list of decisions made between January and May, and the figures show a sharp decline from the $4.6b recorded over the same period last year.
Last year, 41 deals were approved in the first five months compared to 34 this year.
One of the more contentious decisions this year involves a Chinese company’s consent to buy sensitive land in the Bay of Plenty for a bottled water operation where it says it will increase capacity, build high-speed bottling lines and generate $65m-plus in exports.
Sensitive land is defined as nonurban, more than 5ha and adjoining significant land such as the foreshore and seabed. It also includes land on islands, on lake beds, in conservation areas, in spaces reserved for recreation and that which is subject to heritage orders or in historic areas.
The OIO decision shows Creswell NZ got consent to buy 6.2ha of land at 57 Johnson Rd, Otakiri Springs, in the Bay of Plenty for a secret sum. Creswell has been reported as planning to export more than one billion litres of drinking water each year from New Zealand. Creswell is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nongfu Spring Co, a large bottled water supplier based in China.
Bottled water exports from New Zealand have been a controversial issue, and the Government plans to introduce a royalty. However, how that could breach free trade deals has been raised in discussions.
Acting Prime Minister Winston Peters said last month he was confident a solution to implement a royalty on bottled water would be found before the end of the year.
Whakatane district councillor Mike van der Boom, who owns a property next to the springs, has been part of a neighbourhood group fighting the expansion of Otakiri Springs for two years.
The largest deal approved in May was for $280m and involved China’s Zehijiang Rifa Precision Machinery Co. The second largest deal was for $209m by CP Auckland (42 per cent North American, 31 per cent Cayman Islands) to buy 6.2ha of non-sensitive land in Central Park at 666 Great South Rd in Auckland from Goodman Nominee (NZ).
In other applications, almost no details were released of a deal where Mai Chen of Chen Palmer in Wellington acted for the secret party involved.
The amount of money involved, who was buying and who was selling and the background were all suppressed. Consent was granted.
Fletcher Distribution (35 per cent Australian, 21 per cent various overseas persons) got consent to buy 2.2ha of land classified as sensitive at Wiri in Auckland for $500,000.
Heritage Lifecare Villages (49.8 per cent Australian) got consent to buy Cargill Rest Home in Invercargill for a sum that is suppressed.