Nuveen’s natural capital arm has acquired 47,751 acres of timberland in the US on behalf of its newly launched global timberland strategy.

Nuveen Natural Capital said it has completed the acquisition of the timberland assets in Washington and Oregon from Green Crow for an undisclosed amount.

The assets are the Nuveen Global Timberland strategy’s first portfolio acquisition in the US Pacific Northwest and add to the current allocation in the US Mid-Atlantic Coast, the manager said.

Chris Lipton, the head of timberland investments at Nuveen Natural Capital, said: “We are incredibly pleased and excited to have sourced such a high-quality, scaled timberland asset in an off-market transaction.

“It clearly demonstrates our depth of relationships in the timberland market and ability to deploy capital into sought-after investment geographies.”

Nuveen’s global timberland strategy was launched last month. The strategy seeks to provide investors with targeted exposure to sustainable timberland investments in core geographies, including the US, Chile, Uruguay, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.

The new vehicle targets a net total return of 5-7% pa through the sale of timber, land sales, carbon offsets, conservation easements and natural appreciation of assets, with a targeted cash yield of 2-3% pa.

The creation of the new “evergreen structure” comes a year after Nuveen merged its timberland and agriculture subsidiaries – GreenWood Resources and Westchester, respectively – into a single natural capital platform, forming part of a consolidated real assets arm.

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