New Zealanders are increasingly sharing in the potential of the country’s plantation forests as they begin to grasp the significant opportunities of sustainably-grown timber combined with carbon sold through the Emissions Trading Scheme.
Jeff Dickie, a director of Roger Dickie New Zealand Ltd, a leading forestry investment business which has advocated for forestry investment for 50 years, says their quest is to educate Kiwis of the benefits of forestry and carbon investment, an asset class that now rivals real estate and alternative forms of investment.
The perception of many Kiwis is that forestry is foreign-owned – true, he says, to the extent that New Zealand hosts large scale timber holdings for some of the more sophisticated global pension funds and institutions. According to the Ministry for Primary Industries, 70 per cent of plantation trees were in overseas ownership in 2013.
Foreign investors have a range of reasons to invest in New Zealand forests, chasing our unmatched forest growth rates, our developed timber infrastructure and proximity to the fastest growing economies, a fundamental driver of timber demand. On top of this, New Zealand is seen as one of the safest, politically-stable places to invest, Dickie says.
