Queensland investment company National & General Group buys Collie Central shopping centre for $10 million

Collie’s biggest shopping complex has new owners after being bought by a Brisbane-based group for an eight-figure sum. The Collie Central shopping centre was put on the market in 2023 and has found a new owner in the National & General Group after it bought the centre for $10 million.. Natgen managing director Steven Goakes said the company would be sticking to the basics in its operation. “This is our fifth shopping centre in our portfolio so we’re getting a level of expertise in how to run them to ensure that customers are happy and thus tenants are happy,” he said. “Our customers are the shop owners and their customers are the shoppers so we make sure that we do with our properties whatever makes the shoppers happy. “They might sound like silly little things but making sure the line markings in the carparks are up to scratch, making sure that the place is clean and tidy and bright and well lit, the signage is good, all these sorts of things. “They sound like common sense, but it’s not always common practice.” It is Natgen’s first investment venture away from the Eastern States, with the company owning trusts with properties in Queensland and New South Wales. The company said the shopping complex — which includes a Woolworths and a Terry White Chemmart — had an average weighted lease expiry of four and a half years and a total tenancy area of 4500sqm. Mr Goakes said Collie’s energy transition made it an attractive investment. “The energy transition is something that I think is generally beneficial to an area, not everyone sees it that way, but we certainly see that,” he said. “When I actually looked at Collie and the location’s attributes of that particular area of energy transition, it’s really so central to the South West Interconnected System, it’s the obvious place for things to happen. “When you look at how much government money is going into that process of transition, it’s like watering a garden, it always produces in multiples of what they put in. “With the amount of money that we’re seeing going into that area it’s certain the benefits will be much greater than the risks, and that’s what we’re looking for.”