Australia’s largest residential developer, Stockland, has secured its first offshore capital partner – Thailand’s Supalai – for a housing project in Melbourne.

Supalai has committed to invest A$53m (€33m) in development of residential land estate in Donnybrook, an outer Northern Melbourne suburb.

The joint venture with Supalai aims to develop approximately 1,500 affordable new homes with open space, a large recreation area and a proposed future school.

Prateep Tangmatitham, chairman and CEO of Supalai, said the company looked forward to co-operating with Stockland in future acquisitions, with a view to developing a long-term partnership.

In 2013, Supalai gave a mandate to Gersh Investment Partners to source investment partners for development projects in Australia.

Gersh executive chairman, Joe Gersh, told IPE Real Assets that the Supalai’s had committed close to A$150m to invest in Australia.

He said Supalai had entered into joint ventures with other Australian groups, including Satterley, Peet, and ICD Property, the end value of which was set to total more than A$1bn.

Gersh said Prateep, who founded the now-listed company more than three decades ago and still holds a controlling interest, had said he intended to allocate “10% or so” of the company’s A$2.5bn net asset base to offshore markets, mostly but not exclusively, to Australia.

“It appears that they will reach the target this year,” said Gersh, adding that there was a pipeline of opportunities.

He added: “Supalai agreed on the deal with Stockland pre-COVID and consummated it during COVID. “This shows their commitment to Australia for both the medium and long term.”

A previous version of this article said Joe Gersh chairman of Supalai, rather than executive chairman of Gersh Investment Partners

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