Investors and KiwiSavers exposed to Booster’s wine woes
Wednesday, 8 July 2026
An NZX sharemarket-listed fund used by the Booster KiwiSaver Scheme faces a potential financial hit after a related wine business put forward a plan to restructure its troubled Hawke’s Bay vineyard operations.
Booster Investment Management, which manages the NZX-listed Private Land and Property Portfolio (PLPP), told investors on Tuesday that it had been “approached” by Booster Wines with the plan.
Booster Wines is the general partner of the Booster Wine Group Limited Partnership, which has leases terminating in 2038 on three PLPP-owned vineyards covering 52 hectares in Hawke’s Bay.
But Booster Wines wants to terminate the leases, blaming a global wine oversupply, and sustained low demand for Hawke’s Bay grapes, and has proposed a lease termination payment to PLPP in the form of a convertible debt instrument.
Read More:
The amount Booster Wines was offering was at a “significant discount” to the present value of Booster Wine Group’s contracted lease payment obligation, Booster Investment Management said, though it stressed it had not agreed to the proposal.
PLPP bought its Hawke’s Bay properties in 2018 for $8 million, though a 2025 valuation suggested they had barely appreciated in value, and were worth just $8.2m at that point.
While that represented around 4% of PLPP’s assets, the income from the leases represented 5% to 10% of current income returns for the fund.
Booster Investment Management said it had commissioned an updated independent valuation of its Hawke’s Bay properties, and would provide a market update once it had been received.
Booster Wine Group was formed from assets that are at the centre of an ongoing High Court case taken by the Financial Markets Authority against Booster Investment Management, and some of the company’s current and former directors and executives.
Booster Wines and Booster Investment Management have the same ultimate owner.
Booster Investment Management is owned by Booster Financial Services, which is owned by Booster Financial Services Group.
Booster Wines is owned by Booster Tahi Limited Partnership, which in turn has a single general partner called Booster Tahi GP Limited, which is in turn owned by Booster Financial Services Group Limited.
But the Booster ownership links run deeper still as Booster Wine Group Limited Partnership is listed as an investment held by several Booster KiwiSaver funds.
And some Booster KiwiSaver funds appear to have investments in PLPP, but Booster says exposure is “small”.
In 2024, the Financial Markets Authority started a case against Booster Investment Management alleging that it, together with five directors and senior managers (Allan Yeo, Paul Foley, David Beattie, Nicholas Craven, and former director Brendon Doyle), had broken the Financial Markets Conduct Act for investments made by Booster Investment Management into a fund held by a related party, the Booster Tahi Limited Partnership.
The FMA alleged funds in three of Booster’s investment schemes, including its KiwiSaver scheme, had money invested in related-party wine company Booster Wine Group, with some of the money invested when the wine company was under performing.
The regulator alleges the investments were not in investors’ best interests, and were made in breach of prohibitions against related party transactions.
Booster Investment Management and the directors and executives named in the FMA’s action are defending it, saying they broke no laws, and acted in the best interests of investors.
A High Court judgment from February as part of the ongoing case said Booster Investment Management invested scheme funds into Tahi across a number of transactions from 2017 to 2023.
The investments totalled at least $70m, the FMA alleged, and the unlisted entities into which Tahi invested the money would “later become the Booster Wine Group”.
In its NZX release on Tuesday, Booster Investment Management said it would not be the only landowner affected by the Booster Wines restructuring.
“Booster Wine Group has advised that it will propose similar lease exit arrangements with its other Hawke’s Bay landlords on substantively the same terms as those proposed to PLPP. No final decisions have been made regarding these arrangements, and as such BWG’s proposal remains incomplete and uncertain,” BIML said.