A new bid worth A$386m (€270m) has been placed for the 101,411km2 Kidman estate in Australia. The bid is from a syndicate of four Australian families and tops the previous bid of A$365m by Australia’s richest woman Gina Rinehart and a group of Chinese investors.

In November 2015, a previous bid from a group of Chinese investors was blocked by the Australian government for national security reasons. The bid was blocked as around 50% of one of Kidman’s stations, the Anna Creek, is located on a weapons testing range and ownership by foreign investors was deemed “not in Australia’s national interest”.

Owners S Kidman and Co have already accepted the Rinehart bid. However, it is subject to government approval and the company can still consider other offers.

The new bid from the Brinkworth, Buntine, Harris and Oldfield families would not require approval as it is not from foreign investors.

The holding includes 10 ranches in four different states that equates to around 1.3% of the overall Australian land area and 2.5% of the country’s agricultural land area.

Read more

The world’s largest stretch of land made up of cattle stations is for sale

Australia’s largest dairy farm to be sold to Chinese investor