Forestry

 

The Fifth Estate has extensive experience in the development of the Australian forestry and forest products processing industries.

 

Our Principals have high level qualifications in forestry and forest ecology and over 50 years combined industry and consulting experience. This experience covers technical and management functions from seedlings to finished product markets. We provide advice to clients in the specific areas of plantation development, silviculture, harvest planning, wood flow scheduling, processing and domestic and international markets.

 

We provide services across all forest products manufacturing sectors including pulp and paper, wood panels, sawn timber and engineered wood products.

The Fifth Estate provides ongoing advice to a number of major private and public forest industry companies, investment banks, superannuation funds and fund managers involved in the forest industry and various industry associations and government forestry bodies.

 

We have acted for either the seller or a bidder in most of the major forest industry and plantation transactions in Australia and New Zealand in the last 10 years. On the buy side, The Fifth Estate specialised in co-ordinating the due diligence process for plantation and forest processing asset acquisitions. 

 

Our experience:

 

• 2011-12: working with UBS The Fifth Estate advised The South Australian Treasury on the successful sale of the state’s Green Triangle forest plantations to a consortium led by The Campbell Group, trading as OneFortyOne Plantations, and backed by a number of investors including Australia’s Future Fund for $670 million, click here for Treasury media release or click here for The Campbell Group media release. 

• 2010-11: working with Gresham Investment House The Fifth Estate advised McGrathNicol on the successful sale of Forestry Properties of Great Southern Plantations to AIMCo and NewForests, click here for NewForests media release.

• 2009-10: working with Rothschild Australia Ltd The Fifth Estate advised the Queensland Treasury (click here for Queensland Treasury media release) on the successful sale of the 99 year licence for Forestry Plantations Queensland to Hancock Timber Resources Group.

• 2009: advised FourWinds Capital Management on the investment through the Phaunos Timber Fund in Matariki Forests NZ, click here for Phaunos Timber Fund press release.

 

Our key competencies:

 

• Mergers and acquisitions in Australia, New Zealand and Asia,

• Facilitation,

• Due diligence,

• Negotiation,

• Forming strategic alliances, and 

• Assisting in securing debt and equity funding

 

Assisting clients in developing major greenfield investments is a core business of The Fifth Estate and over the last decade we have facilitated over $1 billion in new forest products processing investment. Our advocacy has assisted our clients to:

 

• achieve desired outcomes through the government regulatory process,

• obtain financial and non-financial government support,

• negotiate and secure key supply contracts, and

• organise debt funding.

 

We have provided advice and business development assistance to the most secure and sustainable operator in forestry MIS sector in a wide range of activities including technical advice, government relations, contract negotiation, development of markets and investment in downstream processing. We also assist our clients to develop new and innovative forestry investment products.