The farm, at Lowcliffe, produces 428,000 kilograms of milksolids from 950 cows and went under the hammer yesterday afternoon for $15.9 million without milk company shares.
It follows the $10m deadline sale of a 169ha dairy farm in the same district two weeks ago. It worked out at $60,360/ha.
Agent Paul Cunneen said that farm was immaculate with state of the art technology.
The farm sold yesterday has a 54-bale rotary shed, meal feeders, cup removers and computerisation with a foolproof irrigation system via an 800m pivot covering about 240ha. The feeding system, with silos and mills, had four feed heads to provide different rations to different cows.
Water from a mixture of shallow and deep wells provides 5mm/ha/day.
Accommodation is in two good quality homes including a tidy, sunny homestead in a landscaped setting though another house is needed.
The 169ha farm was bought by a small syndicate of locals, one of whom would run it. The bigger farm was bought by an equity syndicate made up of locals and others from around the country.
Cunneen, whose colleague Chris Murdoch was the selling agent for the bigger farm, said they had considered the prices were within the realms of possibilities for the farms which at the top end of the market.
“It was a good price but not a million miles away from where the market has been.”
Both farms were converted to dairy in the last 10 years.
Cunneen said the space for dairy is now getting tight with very few sheep left on the plains.
The area had real advantages for dairy with its climate, free-draining soils and irrigations systems which allowed farmers to hit production within 5% of budget. It was very rare to have to stand cows off paddocks.
The popularity was evidenced by the sale of seven dairy farms in the last two months by Property Brokers in Ashburton, leaving him and Murdoch looking for new listings, Cunneen said.
