Aristocrats buy up Kiwi farms
Austrian and German aristocrats have bought more New Zealand farmland to plant pine forests.
The Overseas Investment Office (OIO) has given consent to European bluebloods Johannes Trauttmansdorff-Weinsberg and the Gemmingen-Hornberg family to buy sheep and beef farms in Wairarapa and Wairoa.
Austrian Trauttmansdorff We ins berg has bought the 1000-hectare Bush grove and Glentarn Station, near Masterton, for $4.2 million from Roger Dickie, while the Gemming en Horn berg family from Germany has bought a 736ha farm near Wairoa for $6.7m.
The OIO found Dickie breached OIO rules when he sold the 1727ha Hadleigh Station, also near Masterton, for $13.4m to Austrian Countess Veronika Leeb Goess-Saurau but it said it had no power to take action.
In its decision approving the Trauttmansdorff-Weinsberg purchase, the OIO said the land was previously used as two separate sheep and beef farms. During last year, Dickie had planted 121ha in radiata pine and the remaining plantable area of 548ha is currently being planted. Some land is being subdivided.
The Gemmingen-Hornberg family has been investing in forestry in New Zealand for 18 years, and already owns a forestry block adjoining the land it has just bought off Whaitirinui Farm, a company owned by Ralph and Susan Brownlie.
The German family intends to develop 496ha of the farm as commercial forest and retain existing areas of pioneer indigenous forest and indigenous vegetation.
The chairman of lobby group 50 Shades of Green, Andy Scott, said the sales showed there was no slowing in the rate of foreign owners buying land for forestry.
‘‘It is just peaking. It is a big worry because it is taking away jobs and productive farmland.’’
His group is planning a march on Parliament next month to highlight the issue. Incentives to plant trees have led to the median price of forestry farms rising by 45 per cent over the past year from $6487 per hectare to $9394 per hectare, the Real Estate Institute said in June.
The foreign owners do not qualify for grants from the one billion trees programme funded by the Provincial Growth Fund.