Bouwinvest Real Estate Investors has opened an office in Sydney, Australia, its first outside the Netherlands, as it seeks to invest €1.5bn in Asia-Pacific markets by 2021.

Tjarko Edzes, director for Asia-Pacific, has moved to Sydney to lead activities.

The announcement comes a day after it was revealed that Bouwinvest was investing alongside fellow Dutch investor APG, Macquarie Infrastructure & Real Assets and Greystar Real Estate Partners in Chinese residential markets.

Bouwinvest, which is owned by Dutch pension fund BPFBouw, is looking to increase its direct global capabilities and plans to open a New York office later in the year.

It manages a global real estate mandate for BPFBouw and a number of Dutch real estate funds on behalf of BPFBouw and third-party institutional investors.

Bouwinvest manages €11.3bn in invested capital in total and has an ambition to increase this to €15bn by 2021.

Stephen Tross, CIO for international investments, said: “Bouwinvest is working towards a balanced and diversified global real estate portfolio, with a target 40% of our total AUM in international assets and 60% in our domestic funds in the Netherlands.

“The fast-growing Asia-Pacific markets will play a key role in achieving those ambitious growth targets.”

Last year, Bouwinvest completed €900m in international investments last year, of which just under €300m was in Asia-Pacific.

Edzes said: “Bouwinvest’s Asia-Pacific portfolio is on a strong growth trajectory and the new Sydney office is well located to maintain this momentum and coordinate the expansion strategy, as Australia is currently our largest investment market in the region by asset value.”