Environmental Finance Award Wins

28 July 2023 Boutique investment manager of the year, Asia: New Forests; Personality of the year: David Brand

Winning the award for ‘Boutique investment manager of the year, Asia’, on 1 March 2022, New Forests announced it had raised $130 million towards impact in forestry in Southeast Asia with the first close of its Tropical Asia Forest Fund 2 (TAFF2).

New Forests collaborated with the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to develop an innovative blended finance structure focused on impact for the fund.

The structure enables TAFF2 to focus on climate action, community engagement, and biodiversity conservation across its plantation forestry portfolio. The impact activities are closely linked to the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

New Forests attracted eight new investors to TAFF2 in 2022.

The fund is one of the latest chapters of the story of New Forests, which has grown to $11.5 billion with 1.2 million hectares of land as of the end of 2022 since it was founded by David Brand in 2005.

Brand, the chief executive officer of the firm, and winner of Environmental Finance‘s ‘Personality of the year’ award, founded New Forests in 2005, with a vision to transform the forestry industry and create an asset that could deliver sustainability outcomes on nature, communities, and the circular bioeconomy.

I wanted to have an investment business that could pursue strategies in that sustainability line. We’ve never wavered from that vision of the business.”

“Today, you can see the dividends it has paid with market-leading returns for 18 years. We’ve never had a year with negative returns.”

Headquartered in Sydney, New Forests is a Certified B Corp and operates in Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia, Africa and the United States. For more information, please visit: www.newforests.com.