Stafford Establishes Timberland Continuation Fund at USD 1.2 billion

LONDON — Stafford Capital Partners (“Stafford”) today announced it has established a USD 1.2 billion continuation vehicle, the Stafford International Timberland Continuation Fund (The Continuation Fund or The Fund), marking a significant milestone in the firm’s strategic management of its timberland holdings.

The Continuation Fund is a “roll-up” of three of Stafford’s existing core timberland funds – Stafford International Timberland funds VI, VII and VIII – into a new perpetual fund that will hold 74 high-quality core timberland assets. The fully-deployed portfolio took Stafford seven years to construct and holds interests in over 6.3m acres of commercial timberland in the USA, New Zealand, Australia and Latin America. This includes a number of assets that are seen as key strategic holdings in these regions where high-quality assets can be tightly held.

The Fund holds positions in the 2nd and 3rd largest commercial timberlands estates in New Zealand, one of Australia’s largest softwood forest estates and over 1.6m hectares of commercial timberland plantations in the US South, spanning 37 assets in 15 different states.

The portfolio’s diversification and scale have made it a highly attractive vehicle for institutional investors, particularly for large pension schemes that view timberland as a core long-term strategic asset within their portfolios.

Of the existing investors in SIT VI, VII and VIII, 73% rolled their interest into the newly established Continuation Fund, with 27% of the investors electing to be replaced by new capital commitments. The Fund received particularly strong support from UK Local Government Pension Funds who represent 54% of the Fund – underscoring the continued investor demand from UK pension schemes for high-quality natural capital assets.

Stafford built out the portfolio between 2011 and 2018 through a mix of secondaries, primaries and co-investments and now manages 21% of the portfolio directly.

The firm plans to not raise further capital for the Continuation Fund or make new investments. It will actively manage the portfolio and seek to consolidate the Fund’s holdings around the strongest performing, strongest cash-yielding assets. As part of this strategy, it will seek to sell-down approximately 28% of the portfolio in the coming years, which is expected to generate cash yields in excess of 8% over the next ten-years.

In 2024, the Continuation Fund portfolio sequestered 7.8 mtCO2e, of which part was harvested for sustainable wood products. The net sequestration of 2.1 mtCO2e is comparable to the emissions of 500,000 cars in one year¹², underscoring the Fund’s role in climate change mitigation as a nature-based solution. Over the next 10 years the Fund is expected to deliver net CO2 removals of 17.5 million tCO2e³, equivalent to the average annual consumption-based emissions of approximately 1.5 million UK citizens⁴. Beyond carbon sequestration, assets in the portfolio seek to protect and restore critical local biodiversity, support water quality, and maintain ecosystem services that are vital for long-term environmental resilience. Over 200,000 hectares of the portfolio (just over 3%), equivalent to an area nearly twice the size of London, is protected under explicit conservation easements.

Stafford is an independent private markets investment and advisory firm with USD 8.4 billion (as at 30 September 2025) in assets under management and advice for more than 150 institutional clients worldwide. Founded in 2000, Stafford has a global team of 85+ professionals investing in infrastructure, timberland & agriculture, and sustainable private equity through secondaries, primaries, and co-investments. Stafford is UN PRI signatory and is committed to the Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) Initiative. It implements an RI Policy across all strategies. In the UK, Stafford is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (Firm Reference Number: 225586).