John Ryder has announced the development of Qestral Corporation’s third retirement village in Halswell, SW of Christchurch, taking his company's development programme to $750M.
Ryder, (pictured above) along with Kevin Hickman founded the very successful retirement village operator, Ryman Healthcare 35 years ago. Ryder left the business and sold his shares in 2002.
As we reported here, Ryder and Simon and Jeremy O'Dowd and their families, along with Direct Capital, are major shareholders in Qestral which is building premium retirement villages with an average price is $680,000 for a two-bedroom villa with a single garage.
Targeting the premium market, the company announced it was buying 12ha of land for the new village to be called Banbury Park which will consist of 60 large rest home and hospital suites, 20 dementia suites, 40 serviced apartments and 200 independent and serviced houses.
Qestral has raised capital twice in the past 12 months from existing shareholders and has brought in a new shareholder Direct Capital, the country's leading private equity fund manager.
Ryder says, "In an orderly manner we will expand further (than the $750M) but one thing at a time."
The NBR Rich List estimates Ryder’s wealth at about $105M.
