Australia's richest woman has reached an agreement to purchase one of the country's largest cattle stations for $365 million just months after federal treasurer Scott Morrison knocked back Chinese buyers on "national interest" grounds.
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Gina Rinehart's Hancock Prospecting has signed a deal to take over two thirds of the vast Kidman pastoral empire.
Ms Rinehart has partnered with a Chinese company, Shanghai CRED Real Estate Stock which will hold a third share of the joint venture to be called Australian Outback Beef.
The Kidman's portfolio covers 19 individual properties operated as 12 enterprises, including ten cattle stations, a bull breeding stud farm and a feedlot.
Its cattle stations stretch from the Kimberley in Western Australia, across South Australia and the Northern Territory to Queensland's Channel country.
The Hancock deal is subject to approval from Australia's Foreign Investment Review Board, the Chinese government and will only go ahead once the Kidman group separately sells the Anna Creek station.
The parties entered into a bid implementation agreement which gives them exclusivity arrangements over the sale. The sale is subject to "no superior proposal" being received by Kidman and several other hurdles being achieved.
It comes after the vast landholdings failed to sell to the Chinese-based Dakang Australia Holdings which had offered $371 million in April for the properties before Mr Morrison rejected the deal.
"Given the size and significance of the Kidman portfolio, I am concerned that the acquisition of an 80 per cent interest in S. Kidman & Co by Dakang Australia Holdings may be contrary to the national interest," Mr Morrison said at the time.
S. Kidman & Co is one of Australia's largest beef producers, with an average herd carrying capacity of 185,000 cattle.
The possibility of it selling to offshore interests generated strong opposition from numerous quarters including government, political parties and some in the business community.
Prominent Australians, like entrepreneur and aviator Dick Smith, called the potential sale to Chinese interests an act of madness.
"Should the transaction proceed to completion then the level of foreign ownership of S. Kidman & Co will reduce from the existing level of 33.9% currently foreign owned," Hancock said in a statement released Sunday.
