From the Vault: Plantation Carbon Forestry in Australia with Andrew Morgan

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SFM Agribusiness

From the Asset Vault: In this conversation, I'm joined by Andrew Morgan, Managing Director of SFM Agribusiness, one of Australia’s leading forest management operators - both for traditional timberland management and more recently, in plantation forest carbon projects. We explore the evolution of Australia’s compliance carbon forestry market and the benefits and challenges of the system's standards and methodological approaches for generating Australian Carbon Credit Units (or ACCUs). Andrew explains the mechanism of the market, pricing, and who the main buyers are. He goes on to describe SFM's “ActivAcre” model and how it is enabling landowners to partner with institutional investors for new forest investments. Andrew walks us through the logistic, regulatory, and social factors impacting land aggregation and how carbon credits are reshaping institutional forestry portfolios in Australia.

"If you'd asked me 3 or 4 years ago, carbon and a carbon strategy weren't even considered by most institutional investors when looking at larger assets. It's now a really important part of the value. Traditionally, it was the land and the tree crop. There's now land, tree crop, and carbon. And it could be forming 20 - 30% of the total valuation."

00:12 – Introduction and guest overview

00:48 – Andrew Morgan's background and SFM Agribusiness

03:17 – History of carbon forestry in Australia

06:31 – The four plantation carbon methodologies explained

09:06 – Why Australia needs more plantation forests

10:46 – How Australia's carbon market works

13:48 – Carbon credit buyers and market demand

15:20 – Voluntary vs compliance carbon markets