There is a Texas connection to three significant developments: a Texas billionaire has a taste for Napa Valley and Sonoma wineries. The state of Texas bought a well-known ranch. And the largest timber manufacturing plant on the continent opened in Texas.
Auto Parts to Wine
What does a man who excelled at selling vehicles and auto parts online know about expanding his portfolio with a winery? Or five? The wine industry is about to find out.
Jay Adair became a billionaire with his Copart ecommerce website. He bought a vineyard about a quarter century ago. But he recently bought five additional wineries that were part of the Vintage Wine Estates’ bankruptcy proceedings.
Adair knows that the wine industry has been struggling. Younger consumers aren’t drinking as much alcohol these days. That has left far too many available wine grapes with too few bottles to fill.
But Adair is determined to upgrade his new wineries, expand the staff, and show that his $85 million will be money well spent.
Read the story from Wine Business on Adair’s winery purchases and what attracts him to the industry.
Mega Land Deal
A Texas ranch had been listed for sale at nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. It has a buyer, although the financial details were not released publicly. The Texas General Land Office acquired Brewster Ranch.
What is the Texas General Land Office? Here is how the TGLO’s website describes the agency that was created in 1836:
“The oldest state agency in Texas, the GLO was formed to determine who owned what and where after the Texians and Tejanos won independence. Today the General Land Office manages state lands, operates the Alamo, helps Texans recovering from natural disasters, helps fund Texas public education through the Permanent School Fund, provides benefits to Texas Veterans, and manages the vast Texas coast.”
Texas Mountain Holdings owned the 353,785-acre Brewster Ranch, which sits along the Rio Grande near the Big Bend National Park. The ranch was the largest privately owned ranch on the market in Texas.
Brad Kelley owned Brewster Ranch, part of his 1,000,000-acre portfolio. That placed him ninth on The Land Report 100.
Read The Land Report’s breakdown of the sale of the Brewster Ranch and the response from some of the key people involved in the massive purchase.
Big Timber
Texas will be home to the largest timber manufacturing facility in North America when it is complete. Corrigan OSB (a subsidiary of Martco LLC) opened a facility in Corrigan that a company official said will produce enough OSB (oriented strand board), a plywood substitute, to build 125,000 homes per year.
Wood Central has details on the expansion as the company works to meet surging demand for housing in the United States.
The company said the $212 million facility employs 300 people onsite.
The Lufkin Daily News has an article about how Texas has increased its population by four million people over the past decade, which has increased the need for housing. Read that here.
The housing shortage is not unique to Texas. A combination of factors contributed to the lack of housing across the United States. Homebuilders overbuilt leading up to the Great Recession last decade, and the industry has not fully recovered.
The pandemic, higher inflation, and increased interest rates all added to the shortage. So did institutional investors.
Bankrate.com reported that large investors bought nearly one out of every six homes on the market in the first quarter of 2024, the highest percentage ever. That lessened the supply for homebuyers.
