Craigmore Sustainables acts on behalf of Kauri Forestry in New Zealand, managing and governing its assets and purchases.
Craigmore Sustainables did not share further details about the investor.
However, Craigmore Sustainables chief executive Che Charteris said a lot of investors they worked for were “passive”.
“The decisions that are made are ours [Craigmore].”
He said “that’s the right way of doing it” as you want decision makers to be “living in the places where they are making those decisions”.
The four farms in Central Hawke’s Bay bought by Kauri Forestry in the last 18 months for forestry conversion. Photo / Google Maps
Kauri Forestry now owns thousands of hectares of farmland and forests in New Zealand, including in Hawke’s Bay, Wairarapa, Northland and Marlborough, most of which have been bought in recent years.
It also owns two apple orchards in Clive and Ongaonga.
The Overseas Investment Office (OIO) approved the latest farm purchase in Omakere, citing benefits such as increased exports, investment, and reduced carbon emissions through tree planting.
The OIO decision noted the land will be converted to a Pinus radiata commercial forest with planting during 2026 and 2027.
Once matured, the trees will be harvested and replanted.
The 360ha to be converted to forestry is classified as land use capability (LUC) 7 and 6. For comparison, the worst LUC land rating is 8.
The property was previously owned by the Kerr family, who declined to comment on the sale.
About 150ha of the wider farm, the flatter country at the front, has been sold separately and will remain in farming.
Charteris said he was supportive of farms being subdivided to keep flatter country in farming, while steeper country could be used for forestry.
“It’s almost all LUC class 7,” Charteris said, of the section they’d bought for forestry conversion.
“It has a few gullies in it that we will be retiring.
“It’s what we like to term a really smart land use change decision by a land owner, who is going ‘this is the good farming country and this [part] is not good farming country’.”
He said they would plant natives in the gullies being retired.
A law was passed last year aimed at protecting farmland from being converted to forestry, which mainly protects flatter LUC class 1-5 land but, to a lesser extent, also protects LUC class 6 land.
The new president of Federated Farmers Hawke’s Bay, Anthea Yule, said she was very concerned about another farm being converted to forestry.
“You can’t fault the vendors for taking the opportunity, but the pace of whole-farm conversion to forestry remains a real issue for rural communities.
“The Government has attempted to slow large-scale conversions through changes to the ETS [Emission Trading Scheme] and forestry policy, yet activity has continued.
“The question now is whether those changes have gone far enough.”
Yule said classes 6, 7 and 8 land were where most of the country’s breeding stock were farmed, like ewes and cows.
“When hilly farms are converted to forestry, the flow-on impacts for the community are significant.
“Rural jobs decline, school rolls fall, and the social fabric of the district weakens as families move away.”
She said higher wool and livestock prices were helping but she claimed, on their own, they were unlikely to stop farm sales to forestry.
Meanwhile, a 480ha farm off Middleton Rd in Waipukurau was sold last year to a buyer from Singapore for forestry conversion.