Indian sandalwood company Quintis is looking to sell one of its major projects in the Northern Territory — years before harvesting a single tree.
Quintis sold the western side of Stylo Station near Mataranka for $2.1 million in June and in February sold a freehold block near Katherine called Eagle Park West for $800,000.
It put the rest of Stylo Station on the market this week.
The property includes a 5,800 megalitre a year water licence and about 800 hectares of sandalwood trees.
Qunitis, formerly known as TFS, bought Stylo Station in 2015 from cattle producer and political candidate Tina McFarlane, in a deal that attracted plenty of controversy.
The company said in a statement the sandalwood plantation at Stylo "had underperformed for a variety of reasons" and it was looking to sell and focus on its other plantations near Katherine, the Douglas Daly (NT), the Burdekin region of Queensland and the Ord Valley region of Western Australia.
Trees unlikely to stay
Sales agent Andrew Gray said the property was likely to attract interest from the horticultural sector and businesses "wanting to expand on food production already in the district".
He said the cattle industry could also be interested in its potential to grow fodder crops.
"I think [whoever buys] will remove the sandalwood trees," he said.
"Someone might come along and reinvigorate the plantation, but based on the information we have from the owner, that's not likely."
Mr Gray said the property, being marketed under a new name of Roper Plains, was expected to fetch about $9.5 million.
"That's based on comparable sales and the fact that it's likely the new owner will have the expense of removing those sandalwood trees," Mr Gray said.
He said Quintis was not planning any other property sales.
Green shoots emerging
TFS starting planting sandalwood trees in the Ord Irrigation Scheme in 1999 and quickly grew into the world's largest producer of the exotic timber, which is valued for its heartwood oil.
It expanded across the border into the Northern Territory in 2012, but crashed after its Quintis rebrand in 2017 following a scathing report by an American short seller and a string of revelations that the company had lost major customers without informing the market.
Quintis re-emerged as a private company in late 2018 after a $145 million takeover by global investment giant BlackRock.
The company's operations in the Ord Valley appear to be going well, with new trees being planted this year and a record harvest of about 60,000 sandalwood trees.
Its first harvest in the Northern Territory is not expected until 2027.
According to its website, Quintis' sandalwood estate is still the largest in the world, spanning about 12,000 hectares and home to more than 5.5 million trees.
