A Hong Kong company, Natural Dairy, wants to buy 16 dairy farms which belonged to the Crafar family. Thirteen of the farms are dairy farms and in total, the land is 8,815 hectares.

The Crafar family went bankrupt and could not pay their debts of around $200m. Then receivers took over the properties to try to get back the money that is owed to banks and a finance company. The receivers want to sell the farms for the best price.

Landcorp which is owned by the New Zealand government offered to buy the farms but the receivers did not accept the offer. Instead the receivers have accepted Natural Dairy’s offer of $213.2m. However all major sales to foreign buyers have to be accepted by the Overseas Investment Office (OIO). Natural Dairy was asked to give more information. The Overseas Investment Office will take a few weeks to make a decision.

The Minister of Agriculture, David Carter, did not think it was a good idea for New Zealand farms to be owned by a Chinese company. John Key has just returned from China where he said New Zealand wants to do more trade with China. However, he too is not sure about allowing Chinese companies to buy dairy farms.

The Chairman of Natural Dairy, Graham Chin said, “In the last 12 months the OIO has approved the sale of 80,000 hectares of land to foreign interest.” There is more than 2 million hectares of dairy farmland in New Zealand.

Questions

Would China allow NZ companies to buy Chinese land?

Are New Zealanders more worried about selling dairy farms rather than sheep farms to foreigners?