Merricks Capital: senior secured loans against farms, property and infrastructure

Most private lenders in this directory are property people. Merricks Capital is unusual because it is just as comfortable lending against a grain port, a solar farm or an agricultural business as against an apartment building. That breadth, along with the size of its deals, is what anyone thinking of approaching it should understand first.

The detail below comes from Merricks Capital’s website as at October 2026. Merricks publishes very little in the way of borrower criteria, so where something isn’t stated, we say so rather than guess.

Merricks Capital in brief

Merricks was established in 2007 and became part of Regal Partners, an ASX-listed alternative investment manager, around two years ago. Its website lists offices at 35 Collins Street, Melbourne and 1 Macquarie Place, Sydney. It says it has invested more than $6bn in private credit across Australia and New Zealand.

It manages two credit funds: the Merricks Capital Partners Fund, which describes its strategy as senior secured loans against hard assets, and the Merricks Capital Agriculture Credit Fund, which applies the same approach to agriculture. It describes itself as fully funded and able to move quickly on opportunities it likes.

The three lending lanes

Agriculture

A dedicated agricultural credit fund is rare in Australian private credit. Merricks’s published example is a $30m finance package, over 24 months, for Harmony Agriculture and Food Company to support growth and a restructure. That gives a sense of scale: this is corporate agribusiness lending, not seasonal finance for a single farm.

Commercial real estate

Its property examples include funding the second construction stage of an office building at 51 Albert Street in Auckland, a senior residual stock facility for a completed project, the refinance of residential apartments in a Sydney CBD tower, and its part in arranging a much larger funding agreement over a CBD development site in Sydney.

Specialised industrial and infrastructure

Here the security is operating infrastructure. Examples include the T-Ports grain export facility at Lucky Bay on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula and a 10 MW solar farm at Batchelor in the Northern Territory.

What Merricks Capital doesn’t publish

Unlike lenders that print a criteria table, Merricks doesn’t list minimum or maximum loan sizes, maximum LVRs, terms, or what documents it needs. Its borrowers page talks about flexibility, sector knowledge and speed instead. In practice, that means every deal is assessed individually, and the conversation starts with the asset, the business plan and the exit, not a checklist.

It also means you shouldn’t assume a fit. If your loan is small or straightforward, the time spent preparing an approach may be better used elsewhere.

Want a quick read on which kind of lender your asset suits before you prepare a pitch? Ask us. It’s free, and no credit check is run.

Who Merricks Capital is likely to suit

• Agribusinesses with substantial operations, assets and a growth or restructure plan that banks find too complex.
• Property developers and owners needing construction, residual stock or refinance facilities on larger projects in Australia or New Zealand.
• Infrastructure and industrial operators with hard assets such as ports, storage or energy generation.
• Borrowers who value a single lender that understands their sector and can move faster than a syndicate of banks.

Who should probably look elsewhere

• A farming family needing working capital, a new header or a short-term bridge before harvest income arrives.
• A small business owner wanting to release equity from a home or shop.
• Anyone needing less than a few million dollars. Merricks hasn’t published a minimum, but nothing in its case studies comes close to small business scale.

For those borrowers, our guide to business loans against rural property and the wider range of secured business loans are better starting points.

Questions to raise in a first conversation

1. Does my deal fit the Partners Fund or the Agriculture Credit Fund, and what size range do you typically fund?
2. Will you lend as senior debt only, or can you also provide a subordinated layer?
3. What security will you take beyond the main asset: guarantees, a general security agreement, water entitlements, plant?
4. What will the facility cost in dollars over its expected life, with all fees included?
5. How long from term sheet to drawdown, and what can slow it down?

Alternatives if Merricks isn’t the answer

• Other large private credit managers: Wingate and Metrics Credit Partners also lend against commercial property and other assets at the larger end of the market.
• A bank first? For agribusiness in particular, the major banks and regional banks have deep rural lending teams. If they’ll lend on terms that work, that is usually the cheapest money available.
• Need a commercial property loan of a more ordinary size? See commercial property loans.
• Need cash fast against land or buildings you own? A bridging loan or second mortgage can often settle in days.

Smaller in scale, still serious about funding? We can help you find the fit

Merricks Capital plays at the big end, where a single loan can fund a port or a regional food business. Most of the owners who use this directory need something closer to home: a farm, a factory or a family house used as security for a few hundred thousand dollars of working capital.

If that’s you, our enquiry form is the quickest next step. It needs roughly sixty seconds and involves no look at your credit history whatsoever. Nothing gets circulated to a string of lenders; instead a lending specialist works through what you sent and phones you directly. Give clear detail on the property or farm, where it sits and the dollar amount, and the first suggestion you hear should be a workable one.

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