May 9, 2024

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

ASX-listed fund manager Centuria Capital Group announced it has expanded its agricultural portfolio with the acquisition of Latimga Fresh’s 21-hectare glasshouse facility located in Katunga, Victoria. 

The off-market sale-and-leaseback deal was secured on a 20-year triple-net lease by the unlisted, open-ended Centuria Agriculture Fund (CAF), bringing the fund’s portfolio to encompass five of Australia’s large-scale tomato glasshouse infrastructure facilities.

Katunga Fresh has operated at this site for 20 years and has grown to be one of Australia’s largest tomato suppliers to the country’s supermarkets on a year-round basis. The addition of this asset now increases Centuria’s total agriculture AUM to $450 million and expands its holdings to more than 100 hectares of glasshouse space with 100 percent occupancy and a 17-year WALE (weighted average lease expiry). 

“The Katunga facility is a high-quality precision farming asset, which aligns perfectly with our investment strategies and is backed by a strong tenant covenant,” said Jason Huljich, joint CEO, Centuria. 

This Katunga acquisition comes only months after CAF acquired 12 hectares of protected glasshouse and greenhouse cropping assets in South Australia for A$21.5 million (US$14.38 million) through a deal announced in January 2024. 

Centuria Capital Group launched CAF in mid-2022 seeded with a $177 million state-of–the-art glasshouse in Warragul, Victoria. The fund was structured as being complementary to Centria’s existing agricultural trusts, and is taking a hybrid investment approach, meshing its focus between primary agricultural production farmland and ancillary assets along the supply chain with farming technologies. 

“The Fund has a two-prong investment strategy,” explained Huljich in June 2022. “It will primarily focus on precision farming assets, such as glasshouse production, netted crops, vertical farming and properties with access to water, substrate growing and automated harvesting.”

“Secondly, we will target assets aligned to the agricultural supply chain, such as processing, storage/cold storage and distribution to meet the paddock-to-plate demand. This remit includes both existing assets as well as those where farming operations can be expanded or improved through capex funding.”

“We aim to continue expanding CAF into one of Australia’s largest, sector-specific agriculture funds providing Centuria investors with access to high quality real estate opportunities, which in our view are critical Australian food bowl infrastructure assets.”

Located approximately 230 kilometers north of Melbourne and 45 kilometers north of Shepperton, Victoria in the Goulburn Valley region, Katunga Fresh has focused on building out a low-cost, clean energy operation using the latest quad gen technology and is exploring additional renewable energy technologies which target lower cost of production while fostering improved sustainability outcomes. 

Katunga’s lighting systems increase growing hours, produce yields, and offset the seasonality of tomato growing, giving the facility a capacity of approximately 16,000 tons of truss tomatoes per annum. 

In addition to glasshouse facilities, this acquisition also includes large packing sheds, energy infrastructure, significant bore water licenses, and substantial onsite water storage capacity. 

“We are pleased to partner with Katunga Fresh whose focus on high-efficiency production systems provide it with a genuine point of difference in the marketplace and enables the operator to generate a consistently profitable supply of fresh tomatoes and capsicums all-year-round,” said Andrew Tout, head of agriculture, Centuria. 

“Katunga Fresh has been operating since 2004 and was one of the nation’s first adopters of glasshouse production. It continues to be an innovator within the precision farming market.”

~ Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor in chief with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and Agtech Intel News. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com.

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