Wang needs approval to buy Crafar farms

Friday 11th June 2010

The High Court has upheld the Overseas Investment Office's view that the New Zealand-registered arm of a Chinese investment group may need permission from the office to buy 16 farms from the collapsed Crafar family dairying empire.

UBNZ Holdings signed sale and purchase agreements for 16 former Crafar farms in late May and had sought a declaration from the court that it did not require OIO permission for the transactions.

UBNZ’s May Wang, a Chinese mainland would-be investor in New Zealand whose first foray went badly awry, and is now seeking $1.5 billion from Asian investors to buy dairy farms and build a specialty product manufacturing unit in New Zealand for exports to Asia.

UBNZ is part-owned by Natural Dairy (NZ) Holdings Ltd., a Hong Kong-based company, which is associated also with the New Zealand-registered NDNZ Media Ltd., publisher of Chinese and English language newspapers distributed in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

Natural Dairy stressed earlier this year that "while May Wang, who heads the company that is currently purchasing land on behalf of Natural Dairy, has had some previous business difficulties ... Natural Dairy is a separate entity backed by reputable large scale investors, primarily from the Asian region.”

OIO manager Annelies McClure said the High Court decision "supports the OIO's view that consent may be required by UBNZ Assets to purchase the farms."

The OIO will continue its investigation into the purchase of the four farms already purchased by UBNZ in February.

UBNZ said the court decision does not affect the companies' plans to acquire dairy assets in New Zealand and it will be lodging the relevant OIO applications as intended.

Businesswire.co.nz

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