Richard Chandler
Now here’s a thing – New Zealanders do like investing in Tasmania! It’s just a matter of what business they consider viable.
The issue of Kiwi Richard Chandler declining to put his corporation’s money into a pulp mill continues to rage in the media. Yet there are other Kiwi interests going in big on another investment up north. But you wouldn’t know of the connection from reading our local morning newspaper.
It has just reported that Australia’s biggest dairy operation has grown bigger, with a new $4 million farm on the Van Diemen’s Land Company’s Woolnorth property. It’s a 1,000-cow farm and part of the company’s $180m expansion of dairy farming (another 29 farms). All up, Woolnorth will have a herd of 40,000.
The Van Diemen’s Land Company is owned by a New Zealand company, Tasman Farms Ltd. Tasman Farms was taken over in 2008 by the New Plymouth District Council, of Taranaki, NZ’s North Island. It holds near enough to 88 per cent of the operation.
Head honcho (or should that be “boss cocky”?) is Keith Sutton, a Kiwi. He is both governor of the VDL Company and chair person of Tasman Farms.
