July 24, 2018

Seeka Limited, a Te Puke, New Zealand-based company providing orchard leasing, management, and post-harvest services, announced its intention to sell its Northland land holding.

The assets in question total 288 hectares across nine orchards, including six orchards recently acquired by Seeka from T&G Global only months ago.

In April of this year, New Zealand-based T&G Global announced its agreement to sell its kiwi orchards and packhouse facilities for the packing and storage of avocados, kiwifruit, and citrus – along with additional assets located in KeriKeri – to Seeka Limited in a deal valued at NZ$40 million (US$29 million).

At the time, T&G also agreed to sell the entirety of its Zespri shares to Seeka, valued at approximately NZ$2 million (US$1.42 million).

Under the terms of the transaction, Seeka gained control of approximately 80 hectares of orchards currently growing Hayward, ENZAGold, ENZARed, and Zespri Sungold varieties of  kiwifruit.

For Seeka, which operates through three business units: Orchard Operations, Post Harvest Operations, and Retail Service Operations, the Northland region where the T&G orchards and post harvest assets exist is one that has been identified as a high growth area for both kiwifruit and avocados.

“With new avocado developments in the area we are expecting demand for post-harvest facilities to increase,” said Michael Franks, CEO of Seeka in April. “We also anticipate increasing demand for kiwifruit as growing conditions have proven very favourable, particularly for gold varieties and with Seeka providing a new, competitive dynamic to the market focusing on quality, price and service.”

Franks states that from the beginning, it was Seeka’s intention to update the post-harvest facility prior to marketing the Northland land holding.

“This is a large scale horticultural asset holding in a prime growing region of New Zealand,” said Franks. “ We are looking for a large scale investor or consortium to own these orchards with professional orchard management and post-harvest services in place from Seeka. At the same time Seeka is investing in the fundamental post-harvest infrastructure with new packing facilities and cool storage planned for Kerikeri.”

The sale process is set to run for five weeks, with the calling of bids scheduled for August 15, 2018. All interested investors can access the Northland Orchard Information Memorandum here.

-Lynda Kiernan