February 8, 2024

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

With the goal of increasing accessibility to the sustainable timberland asset class, Atlanta-based Southview Timberland Investments announced it is accepting investors for the first time since its launch, opening to a broader pool of accredited investors, family offices, and select institutions. 

The company is founded by John Brenard, a finance professional with a decade of wealth management experience with J.P. Morgan, Well Fargo Advisors, and Smith Barney, who brings both finance and operations leadership to the role, and Terry Myers, a timberland investor with more than 30 years of timberland management experience with a focus on value maximization and land optimization. 

Together, the pair have partnered on timberland investing for more than a decade and have created a holistic strategy for Southview that they say goes beyond traditional timberland investment.

Southview stated that it is addressing the issue of limited investor access to direct timberland investments and sees their platform as meeting a growing desire for portfolio assets to act as natural climate solutions. This is done by providing a gateway for their clients to tap into local knowledge and sustainable practices while enhancing the diversification within their portfolios. 

This commitment extends beyond the pursuit of returns to also concentrate on sustainable practices and management to ensure the health of the forests along with the interests of their investors.

“Our local presence, network of landowners, and service provider relationships are an additional source of competitive advantage,” stated the company. 

The company has chosen to focus on the U.S. Southeast region due to its reputation for being rich in natural resources, its favorable climate for timber, and the ability to leverage its recent population influx to take advantage of opportunistic land sales and an increasing demand for timber products. 

It’s been a popular choice, and for good reason. A regional focus on the U.S. South has pervaded timberland deals in recent years. Known as the U.S. “wood basket”, the region is responsible for more than 55 percent of the country’s timber harvest by volume, and produces more wood products than any country on Earth except the U.S. in its entirety. Furthermore, Southview explained that timber from the U.S. South reaches the sawmill at less than half the cost of timber from the Pacific Northwest, when contrasting pine with hemlock and Douglas fir. 

In February 2022, Manulife IM provided long-term mortgage loans of $625 million – secured by approximately 832,000 acres of timberland and timber portfolio assets – to fund a deal between The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board (OTPPB) and Tamarack Timberlands LLC, an investment vehicle owned by the pension fund, with mortgage holder Resource Management Service (RMS) for direct ownership and full governance of approximately 870,000 acres of loblolly pine forest spread across the U.S. Southeast.

Four months later, in June 2022, Manulife IM, together with 1PointFive, a subsidiary of Occidental’s Low Carbon Ventures (OLCV) business, announced their entering into a lease agreement on 27,000 acres of timberland in Western Louisiana as the foundation for a carbon capture and sequestration project. 

Another high-profile timber deal in the region occurred in February 2023, when Campbell Global, the wholly owned timber investment manager of J.P. Morgan Global Alternatives, advised investors and led the acquisition of more than 250,000 acres of commercial timberland across three properties in the Southeastern region of the U.S. The deal was valued at more than $500 million, reflecting the scale of capital commitments being made in the asset class and geographic region. 

To learn more about Southview’s strategy, contact the Southview team by sending an email to info@southviewtimber.com.

~ Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor in chief with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Unconventional Ag. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com.

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