Owhata 2B sees great progress January 28, 2021

We’re thrilled to see real results from our work with Owhata 2B Trust and Owhata 7 Trust. Although they are separate trusts with their own assets, shareholders and trustees, they have operated together as a partnership for many years to provide a better economic return on their adjacent lands.

We’ve been working with the Trust since August 2020 to create an online profile to provide better engagement with owners. One of the issues the Trustees were grappling with was the low number of owner details and so a strategy was developed to address this. Some of the goals were to:

Since the launch of our online campaign the trust has been pleased with the engagement from owners. In September 2020 owner lists were released online and a request sent out for owners to provide their contact details to Deloitte. These posts reached over 43,000 people on Facebook.

We’re also excited to see the progress with the Trust’s retirement village project on the outskirts of Rotorua. A review of the final business case has found it to be a commercially viable endeavour. This would be a significant undertaking for the Trust and the thinking is to partner with a proven operator under a Partnership structure where a shareholding in the operating business is secured.

If a 180-unit retirement village and aged care facility was built, the land development costs would be circa $32.9 million and build costs of circa $43m. The Trust has identified a short list of 5 potential partners and each party was asked to present through a series of workshops on the 17th of March 2020 however due to COVID these were postponed. The Trust has applied for further funding to engage advisors to assist in the selection of a preferred partner and commence discussions around possible commercial terms.

Watch this space for developments on this exciting project.