UniSuper buys former Gunns timber plantation in Tasmania

afr.com:

UniSuper and two European pension funds will consider building wind farms in Tasmania after investing hundreds of millions of dollars each to buy timber plantations once owned by collapsed Tasmanian group Gunns.

UniSuper has teamed up with the United Kingdom’s Pension Protection Fund and The Netherlands’ APG Asset Management to acquire Forico, which was created by global investment group New Forests to manage 173,000 hectares of forest after acquiring it from Gunns in 2013.

The 173,000 hectares being acquired by UniSuper and its partners is the biggest freehold land estate in Tasmania. Getty

Gunns, which milled trees mostly in north-west Tasmania and was Australia’s biggest exporter of woodchips, went into administration in 2012 – shortly after it stopped cutting down native forests and dropped legal action against conservationists – following heavy losses and was later liquidated.

The sale of Forico was sparked by the winding down of a 10-year closed ended fund managed by New Forest. PPF, which had a stake in the fund as well as a separate co-investment, exercised a pre-emptive right to buy Forico and brought in UniSuper and APG as co-investors. Each investment group will have a 33 per cent stake in Forico.

The 173,000 hectares being acquired by UniSuper and its partners is the biggest freehold land estate in Tasmania and includes 89,000 hectares of trees that can be cut down for timber, with the remaining hectares mostly preserved for conservation. It also includes two wood processing mills, a seedling nursery and a technology laboratory.

UniSuper’s head of private markets, Sandra Lee, said funds globally had been “chasing down” high-quality forestry assets.

“Globally, we’re short fibre,” Ms Lee toldThe Australian