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John O’Reilly has spent 30 years making a living out of forestry but doesn’t just see timber as a commodity. He has always been a big nature lover. “That would have been my primary driver on day one,” he says of his career choice. “I’d have been a mouth open, David Attenborough watcher on telly all the time, always was.”
Having spent most of his life working for leading player Green Belt Forestry, he has now taken an entrepreneurial turn, leading and investing in NewGen, a sustainable forestry manager. Earlier this month it revealed details of its Family Tree Impact Investments (FTI) platform, which will spend €50m over three years buying harvesting rights from landowners.
March 4, 2021 9:11 am
A new forestry investment platform named Family Tree Impact Investments (FTI) has launched plans to deploy €50 million over the next three years.
The FTI platform, operated by sustainable forestry manager firm NewGen Forestry, will acquire forestry harvesting rights from existing plantation owners, both farmers or private forest owners.
FTI and NewGen Forestry have secured backing from institutional investors and private offices, targeting the acquisition of harvesting rights of
2,000ha of land in its first year of operations, with plans to build a minimum portfolio of €50 million of assets by 2023.
NewGen Forestry is led by former Green Belt Forestry CEO John O’Reilly, and seed investors in FTI and NewGen include the O’Kane Family – the founders of Mercury Engineering – and David Hourihane, who previously led the establishment and deployment of the €78 million Irish Government backed Ireland Energy Efficiency Investments plc.