Macquarie Bank's Lower Eyre Peninsula aggregation has failed to sell at auction on Friday at the Cummins Bowling Club despite strong pre-sale interest.
The bank's Infrastructure and Real Asset portfolio bought the 2648 hectares at Cummins less than six months ago from Qatari-owned Hassad Australia as part of a larger portfolio.
Elders general manager real estate Tom Russo confirmed none of the four properties had sold under the hammer when they were offered individually, despite more than 10 registered bidders.
Only Sampson's, comprising 781ha (479ha arable) received a $2.6m bid while 522ha Paradinya (462ha arable) received multiple bids to get to $1.47m.
Mr Russo said negotiations were continuing with existing EP operators but also agricultural investors yet to take a position on the EP.
"Everyone in the room was astonished there was not more robust bidding at the auction," he said.
"We are negotiating with a mix of people that were at the auction but also those that couldn't operate under auction conditions."
Mr Russo said the vendor's instructions were to sell all four parcels or none.
"If they need to keep farming they want to keep the scale," he said.
