UK Pension Protection Fund, UniSuper, and APG Acquire Forico and Tasmania’s Largest Hardwood Estate

The UK’s Pension Protection Fund (PPF), Australian superannuation fund UniSuper, and APG Asset Management N.V (APG), on behalf of its Dutch pension fund client ABP, have announced the acquisition of Forico and a 170,000-hectare (420,079 acres) plantation forestry estate in Tasmania, Australia, from a New Forest managed fund.

Under the agreement, the three investors will each own 33% of Forico and the forestry estate as a direct investment. New Forests will be retained to provide investment management services.

Forico is Tasmania’s largest private forest management company. The forestry estate is one of Australia’s largest plantation hardwood estates by productive area and consists of vertically integrated assets and operations spanning approximately 90,000 hectares (222,395 acres) of productive plantation forest. It also owns key infrastructure along the supply chain consisting of two wood processing mills, a seedling nursery, fiber technology laboratory, and port access via a freehold facility at Long Reach, Tasmania. The estate is the largest freehold land estate in Tasmania and a key contributor to the supply of sustainable hardwood domestically and abroad for end uses such as packaging and tissues.

Forico’s market leading approach to valuing natural capital and sustainability reporting has demonstrated that the estate is sequestering more than 123 million tons of CO2e. The current plantation rotation is expected to remove from the atmosphere and sequester a further 24.7 million tons before it is harvested and replanted for another rotation.