A large corporate in the form of Carter Holt Harvey is selling 29 dairy farms near Tokoroa individually, while not ruling out the possibility of a sale to another corporate.
Bayleys is marketing the farms at fixed prices. They range in size from 218 to 726ha and in price from $5.1 million to $10.4 million. The prices do not include Fonterra shares, which CHH owns.
The farms are expected to fetch a total $224.5 million. They are all within 20km of Tokoroa.
CHH is now wholly owned by New Zealand's richest man Graeme Hart, who has developed the company into a world leading beverage packaging provider. The company still owns the pulp mill in Tokoroa.
New Zealand's two great forestry companies CHH and Fletcher Challenge have both sold their huge forest estates in the central North Island.
Some of the land the forests were on has been converted to dairying by buyers, the most notable being Wairakei Pastoral, a company associated with wealthy Aucklanders Trevor Farmer, Adrian Burr and Mark Wyborn, which uses state-owned Landcorp to manage its farm conversions. Wairakei's plans to source water from the Waikato River have been controversial.
Mike Fraser-Jones, senior agent for realtor Bayleys, said the CHH farms all had deep well bores for water.
There had been an attempt to market 16 of the farms in one lot last year for $110 million and the farms were put on the market as single units just before Christmas.
The tight financial situation is behind the decision to market the farms individually.
The farms have sharemilkers with three-year contracts.
The farms are new -- the longest has been in production is 18 months and some came into production in June 2009.
Mr Fraser-Jones said there had been good interest in the farms.
"But typical of anything in the market at the moment buyers are taking a longer time to do due diligence and get finance arranged," he said.
He said a sale to a corporate buyer was possible. "That market is still there. We are just opening it up to more buyers with smaller lots," he said.
Fonterra chairman Sir Henry van der Heyden farms in nearby in Putaruru.
Landcorp has not shown interest in the farms.
