The Centuria Agriculture Fund (CAF) recently purchased one of South Australia’s largest glasshouse assets, which encompasses a 20 hectare glasshouse facility that produces truss-loose, truss-prepack and baby plum tomatoes and accounts for approximately 14% of Australia’s truss tomato market.
The Port Augusta property is operated by sustainable horticultural operator, Sundrop Farms, who produce c.17,000 tonnes of tomatoes per annum in a year round production from the facility.
The 246 hectare site provides:
- four five-hectare glasshouses
- a 1.4 megalitre (ML) reverse osmosis plant
- a 1ML desalination plant that processes up to 600ML of seawater annually
- a 25ML storage dam
- a packaging warehouse and
- a 12.5 hectare Concentrated Solar Energy System (CSP), which creates sustainable onsite renewable energy.
The CSP generates 30,000 megawatts of heating, 45,700 kwh of electricity and facilitates seawater desalination.
The South Australia location provides unlimited access to seawater and is within a region of relatively low humidity, which is ideally suited to tomato production.
The property receives up to 30% more winter sunlight than other greenhouses around Australia, providing a natural competitive advantage on high value periods of truss production.
Andrew Tout, Centuria’s Head of Agriculture, said, “This high-quality glasshouse facility was constructed in 2016, incorporating modern renewable energy, heating and irrigation sources, which creates highly sustainable, premium fresh produce. These are strong fundamentals that underpin a well performing agriculture real estate investment and also present ESG credentials which resonate well with CAF’s sustainability overlay.”
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