Mt White’s buyer will not live there
A foreign national given approval to buy one of the South Island’s largest and most spectacular farms has no plans to live on the property.
Czech-born businessman Lukas Travnicek will pay what is likely to be an eye-watering price for the pastoral lease to Mt White Station, a pristine high-country station near Arthur’s Pass covering 40,000 hectares.
The Overseas Investment Office (OIO) gave his company, Southern Ranges Ltd, consent to acquire the sheep and beef farm. It withheld the sale price but, based on similar sales, it probably exceeded $30 milllion.
The source of Travnicek’s wealth is not clear but his father, Jiri Travnicek, founded Pegas Nonwovens, a company that makes textiles for nappies and hygiene supplies. Lukas Travnicek, who trained as a lawyer, was a company executive.
According to Czech media reports, the company sold in the 2000s to a Russian-backed investment firm for $6.5 billion koruna (about NZ$450m), much of which was collected by the elder Travnicek. He is a successful race horse breeder and the family owns a stable in Normandy, France.
Lukas Travnicek, a permanent resident here, has been in his birth-country since May last year but must return to New Zealand within 12 months and remain indefinitely as a condition of owning the Mt White property.
In his native Czech Republic, Travnicek owns the Jasmine Thai Massage and Spa, in the city of Brno in the country’s east. It employs eight staff, Czech company records show, and has a modest turnover.
Before leaving New Zealand last May, he rented a modest property in New Plymouth with his wife and three daughters, who are New Zealand citizens.
Travnicek told Newsroom he would not live at Mt White Station, but would return to New Plymouth, where his daughters had friends and were familiar with schools and he enjoyed ultra-marathon running. When the family ‘‘visited’’ the Mt White property, they would stay in the owner’s cottage, he told Newsroom.
He said he made his offer after three or four visits, the first involving flying over the station in a helicopter in summer 2016-17, landing next to a hut.
As a permanent resident, he was not required to show the benefits to New Zealand of his buying the land, including walking access, so the OIO could not make access a condition of consent. Coast to Coast athletes pass the station’s Mt White Bridge during the multisport race.
Land Information New Zealand (Linz), of which the OIO is part, the Department of Conservation, and Travnicek’s representatives will meet today to discuss the future of Riversdale Flats.
The flats involve almost 1000ha of land set aside in 1901 for inclusion in a national park but not incorporated into Arthur’s Park national park when it was created in 1929, instead being grazed and leased as part of the station.
Travnicek was granted permanent residency in November 2013.
He needed OIO approval after returning to the Czech Republic in May 2017, a move Linz said was to allow his children to reconnect with their family, culture and language, but that made him an ‘‘overseas person’’.
The purchase of Crown-owned pastoral leases by wealth overseas-born investors who appear from seeming obscurity has a long history.
For much of the 1990s, a Crown lease near Tekapo was owned by Tommy Suharto, the son of the Indonesian dictator. After selling the lease to his business partner for $1, Suharto was convicted of arranging the murder of the judge overseeing a corruption trial in which Suharto was the defendant.
A pastoral lease near Queenstown, Walter Peak, has been traded between Israeli billionaires; Mt Creighton is owned by group of Americans, among them a former ambassador and a venture capitalist; a Texan oil magnate owns a lease at the top of Lake Wanaka; a New Caledonian mineral executive bought a lease near Queenstown; a freehold station in Rangitata Valley is owned by Alexandre Germanovich, a Russian oligarch.