Maurice Williamson has done the right thing and approved the sale of the Crafar Farms to the Shanghai Pengxin bid. The creditors of Alan Crafar have got the best deal that they can rather than the discounted attempt by Michael Fay to screw the scrum in his favour.
Land Information Minister Maurice Williamson and Associate Minister of Finance Dr Jonathan Coleman this morning said they had accepted the recommendation of the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) to grant consent to Milk New Zealand Holding, a subsidiary of Shanghai Pengxin Group, to acquire the 16 Crafar farms.
“It is clear that all criteria under sections 16 and 18 of the Overseas Investment Act 2005 have been met, therefore we accept the recommendation of the OIO to grant consent,” Williamson said.
“We are satisfied that Milk New Zealand’s application for consent meets the criteria set out in the Act,” Coleman said.
A condition of the sale is that a joint venture company to be owned 50/50 by the Chinese and Landcorp would develop and manage the farms.
The majority of the planning, budgeting and reporting relating to the farms would take place within the joint venture company and Landcorp would operate the farms, providing operational services and advice.
David Farrar posts about the Crafar Farms, compared with Labour’s record on land sales.
The small circle represents the size of the Crafar farms at 8,000 hectares. The large circle represents the amount of land sold to foreign owners under the last Labour Government at 650,000 hectares.
Under Labour, the equivalent of the Crafar farms were sold each and every month they were in office.
