" />
End of Year Message from New Forests’ CEO Mark Rogers
New Forests celebrated its 20th anniversary in July 2025, a proud moment for the company to reflect on two decades of innovation and growth as a global investment manager. Our founding CEO, David Brand, has stepped down as Chair of our Board and continues to work with us as a valued adviser as we remain committed to positioning the natural capital asset class as a key investment focus for institutional investment portfolios.
New Forests and New Agriculture have also continued to grow alongside our investment partners. This has been particularly pleasing given the relatively subdued capital markets and mild headwinds mostly coming from political noise in the US. The macro influencers in the global economy are still erratic with interest rates and exchange rates providing both opportunity and additional risk to international trade. The Chinese economy has continued to stall with the domestic housing sector in decline and excess capacity in many of its production lines.
LONG TERM DRIVERS
The emerging opportunities and disruptors are focused on nature repair, the evolution of the carbon markets and the emergence of AI. New Forests believes these all fit within the “opportunity” category as we continue to optimise the landscape and layer additional revenue streams on top of core returns. We are already harnessing AI across numerous facets of our business, and we believe that leveraging AI to further optimise land use will deliver significant benefits to both our operations and our investors.
Other longer term demand drivers are also key to the sector – for example, by 2050 we will need a 54% increase in harvested wood to meet global demand and a nearly 60% increase in food output to feed the growing global population.
We’ve seen an uplift in projects and metrics around valuing nature. In 2026, we expect the conversation will shift from “why invest in nature” to “how fast can we scale it.” Investing in nature will play a fundamental role in allowing investors to deliver the spectrum of outcomes that is now demanded from long-term portfolio investors.
To read Mark’s reflections on the market trends over the past year, and what’s in store for 2026, download the insights here.
Delivering on Sustainable Development Goals
