Station buyer won’t 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 tag for the pastoral lease to Mt White Station, a pristine high country station near Arthur’s Pass covering 40,000ha.
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 likely exceeded $30 million.
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. Lukas Travnicek, a permanent resident here, has been in his birthcountry 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. Before leaving New Zealand last May, he rented a modest property in New Plymouth with his wife and three daughters aged 9, 12 and 15, 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 in summer 2016/17. As a permanent resident he was not required to show the benefits to New Zealand of his buying the land, including walking access, and so the OIO could not make access a condition of consent. Land Information New Zealand (Linz), of which the OIO is part, the Department of Conservation (DOC) and Travnicek’s representatives were to meet today to discuss the future of Riversdale Flats.
The flats involve almost 1000ha 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 which Linz said was to allow his children to reconnect with their family, culture and language, but that made him an ‘‘overseas person’’.