If their track record in the area’s anything to go by, the purchase of Halfway Bay by Medeor (NZ) Ltd will be a win for the Whakatipu.
Medeor purchased the 18,000-hectare station, on the shores of Lake Whakatipu, for a rumoured $30 million-plus recently through a related trust, Tushita Holdings Ltd.
Its holding company, NZ Regeneration Investment Group, was established in 2020 in response to the world’s major ecological challenges — essentially focused on using their capital to help address climate change.
Shareholders of that company are Zhengzhong Liang, of Auckland, and Austin Mortimer, of Hawke’s Bay.
Last year, Medeor also bought Woodbine Station, comprising about 861ha of freehold land near Glenorchy, which adjoins the Kinloch Recreational Reserve and Routeburn Scenic Reserve, from Montree Chung.
Kinloch Lodge director John Glover says Woodbine was one of the first stations to go through tenure review, about 25 years ago, but it hadn’t been used productively for ‘‘many years’’.
Since Medeor’s taken it over, though, there are already signs of progress — Glover says former Hawea Station farm manager David O’Sullivan’s been setting the property up on a ‘‘regenerative forestry basis’’, with a focus on pest and predator control and improving soil health to eventually grow ancient grains.
‘‘For the last 10 to 15 years not much has happened and it’s great now to see improvements to the farm — we’re excited to have some food grown locally and the predator and pest control will do amazing things for our biodiversity and wildlife,’’ Glover says.
Meantime, Medeor’s plans for Halfway Bay, formerly owned by NZ-born mining magnate Chris Ellison and Aussie billionaire Tim Roberts, are to keep grazing livestock and use regenerative farming practices to manage the land.
But one of the key projects will be to undertake an ‘‘in-depth ecological study’’ there.
They’ll employ a separate farm manager and staff to run the station, while admin functions, like HR and finance, will be shared between it and Woodbine.
Mortimer says both properties have high ecological value and the company wants to protect the landscapes, and their native flora and
fauna, for NZ’s future.
Their regenerative practices include minimising the use of chemical inputs and rotating livestock to protect soil fertility.
