Refinance your winery or cellar door commercial loan

Ardent Capital Group brings the same method to every client: execution and strategy, clear advice for smart lending, and long-term growth. That means the right lender, structure and timing, straight advice so you borrow with confidence, and today's deal built toward where you want to be tomorrow. On a winery the biggest thing we can influence is who values it. A rural or agribusiness valuer prices four components; a standard commercial one prices the shed and ignores the vines. We set that instruction, get plantings that have come into production counted, and stay with it past drawdown. Every figure is subject to serviceability, lender appetite and approval.

We refinance commercial facilities from $50K up to $30M on the property, with the winery plant and vineyard machinery funded separately alongside it. The new limit follows a fresh component valuation and current servicing, not what you originally borrowed.

Because rural and agribusiness security is a specialist book and not every lender holds one, so going direct can mean being assessed by a credit team with no framework for the asset. We run the comparison across more than 40 lenders, work out which hold a genuine agribusiness book and which will run interest only through a replant, and present to one at a time so your credit file does not collect an enquiry for every conversation.

50% to 60% of the current value on the freehold, with the banks generally at 50% to 55% and non-banks reaching 60%. Rural and agribusiness security lends below metropolitan commercial whatever is standing on it, so plan against that band rather than a commercial one.

Once they are bearing, yes, and that is the reason this asset rewards a refinance more than most. A new planting is a cost for several years while it takes water, labour and trellis and produces nothing, and it does not carry value on a valuation until it is in production. So the work was paid for years ago and the asset it created has only recently arrived, against a facility written before any of it existed. Set out the area, the varieties, the trellis and irrigation and the current yield by block, so the plantings are assessed as established vines.

More than anything else you can influence. A rural or agribusiness valuer assesses the land, the established vines, the winery plant and the cellar door as separate components and adds them up. A standard commercial valuer prices the shed, treats the vines as part of the landscape and reads a once-a-year cash flow as a business in difficulty. That is a different number rather than a different emphasis, and it is decided by the valuation instruction before anyone visits the property.

Yes, and they are the component most often left out of a file. Water and irrigation entitlements carry real value and must transfer with the land, and with the right lender they can be valued and funded as their own asset. Most owners mention water as an operating input rather than presenting it as something a lender can attach a number to. It adds to the total a release is sized against, and it also means the entitlement position wants to be current and clean rather than discovered late.

The ones with an agribusiness book handle it well and the ones without misread it. Costs run all year, the revenue lands once and well after them, and a barrel program widens the gap again. Several vintages of records with yields and the cost and revenue timing beside them turn the cycle into a pattern rather than a warning sign. The standard ask is two to three years of financials plus vintage and yield records, and a structure that cannot carry a poor vintage is the wrong structure for this asset.

Yes, and the structure matters more than the amount. A replant means pulling producing vines and waiting years for the replacement to bear, so the cost and the income gap arrive together, and that combination is what breaks a budget rather than the planting bill itself. Size the release for the years of no production as well as the works, hold an interest only period through it where a lender will write one, and stage the blocks so the estate is never entirely out of production at once.

It helps, so present it deliberately rather than let it turn up. Direct sales are the highest-margin line most estates have, and a material cellar door diversifies the business away from a single annual harvest, which is exactly the concentration a lender worries about on this asset. The other half of it is approvals: the liquor licence conditions, the capacity, the food offering and the parking were set for a smaller operation. Present the growth and the approvals together.

Yes, it is possible, and we arrange these. It is also one of the more intricate refinances in commercial finance, and on an estate there is a question to settle before the others. From 10 August 2026 a new arrangement can only be used for business real property, and a trading estate qualifies, but many wineries have a house on the same title and a property with a private residence attached generally does not. Settle that first. Beyond it, the property has to stay the same single property, and the refinance is limited to the balance outstanding plus accrued interest, so there is no top up, no redraw and no cash out inside the fund. Borrowed money cannot fund an improvement either, which bites unusually hard here because a replant is exactly that and has to come from the resources of the fund. The holding trust is reassigned to the incoming lender rather than dissolved, which carries a legal cost worth weighing against the gain. The operating entity leases the land back in writing, at market rent supported by an independent appraisal, and the rent has to actually be paid. Cross-collateralisation is not available inside super. Fund the deposit from the fund itself, since cross-collateralisation is not available in super, the major banks have exited SMSF lending, and lenders want a liquidity buffer left in the fund after settlement. We know this sounds complicated, and we can assist to make things clearer. Reach out to our team and we will guide you through the entire process. We structure the finance, tell you which lenders will take a winery as SMSF security and on what terms, and bring in the SMSF specialists and licensed advisers who set the fund side up. You will not be working it out on your own.

Often not, and on a winery a decline frequently traces to the wrong framework rather than the wrong business. A lender without an agribusiness book sees a shed, a paddock and a cash flow that arrives once a year, and declines something it has no way to assess. The questions that matter are which valuer attended, whether the components were assessed separately and whether the vintage cycle was read as a cycle. We look at how it was assessed and why the answer was no, then place it where that reason is not the deciding one.

Around three to six weeks with a major bank and two to four weeks with a non-bank lender. A rural or agribusiness valuation takes longer to commission than a standard commercial one, particularly in a remote region, and SMSF refinances are longer again. We give you a realistic timeline at the start so you can plan the expiry date around it.

The existing loan statements for the property and every plant line, two to three years of financial statements and tax returns, vintage and yield records by block, a planting schedule showing area, variety and year planted, the water and irrigation entitlements, a split of revenue between wholesale, cellar door, wine club and events, the liquor licence and its conditions, personal tax returns and notices of assessment for the guarantors, and a statement of assets and liabilities.

The costs are a valuation, legal and settlement fees, any lender establishment fee, discharge costs from each current lender, and break costs where you are leaving a fixed rate. A rural or agribusiness valuation costs more than a standard commercial one and takes longer, particularly in a remote region. We put the real numbers against the benefit before you commit to anything.

Most of the time, no. Where the component position has to be assembled before the file can go to a lender, or the water entitlements need sorting out, a small mandate fee may apply, and we will always be upfront about this before any work begins.

Although we are based in Sydney, we service clients across all major Australian cities and the wine regions around them, including the Hunter, Mudgee and Orange in New South Wales and the regions surrounding Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. Rural valuation timelines differ by region, which is part of what we plan around.

Beyond refinancing the property, we also assist with asset finance and working capital. On asset finance, that covers presses and crush-pad plant, fermentation and storage tanks, barrels, bottling lines, vineyard machinery and tractors and cellar-door fit-out. On working capital, we arrange business overdrafts and lines of credit sized to the vintage cycle, the barrel program and the gap between harvest and sale, and we can fold these into the refinance where it makes sense.