THE GREENGOLD WAY
Our history
GreenGold Group AB (G3X) is a European forest investments company established in 2018, with seat in Stockholm, Sweden. GreenGold as a group started in 2007 and has its history in private equity environment. GreenGold has under more than one decade provided, through its own closed-end funds and managed accounts, investment management services with integrated forest property management, mainly for global institutional investors, of which Harvard Management Company in US was the largest client for many years. GreenGold has managed assets worth approx 1 billion EUR and forest holdings of approx 200 000 ha and has made several investment cycles with a return of over 20% per year. Apart from delivering attractive returns, we have helped our investors operate in a compliant, transparent and sustainable way in complex and challenging business environments where others have not succeeded. Today, GreenGold is about to close all its private equity commitments and only focus on evergreen (i.e. buy-to-hold-forever) forest ownership through G3X and with a public equity strategy in focus.
Best advisors
In each country of operations, we have close and long-term cooperation with the best local professional advisors (auditors, lawyers, valuators etc.) ensuring transparency and compliance of our businesses at highest international standard. We have also close and good cooperation with relevant local authorities, for example, forestry and environmental boards.
Our local footprint
Wherever we operate, we are aiming at building the most professional, local and private forest management organization. For example, in Romania, where we have been active since 2007, we have built, parallel to our large forest holdings, also the country's most professional private forest management organization (www.greengold.ro). We are the first, and the only real private forest management organization alternative for large scale and country-wide property management, to the state forest management company Romsilva. Wherever we operate, we strive to contribute to making the specific country an even more attractive country for forest ownership. We do so by providing a good example in our own business - from acquisitions to management, and through continuous dialogue with various stakeholders and regulators in the forestry business.
Due-diligence
There are two critical aspects of our business: property acquisitions and forest management. Ensuring legal correctness of the property title is crucial, which is why we carefully follow a unique due-diligence system developed in cooperation with best local legal advisors for each property we buy. During the due-diligence process, we are also careful to control the forestry and environmental aspects of the properties we intend to buy. We are making sure we are investing in properties with the best growth potential and which are not containing sensitive biological environments.
Business Concept
Through evergreen, sustainable and profitable forest ownership provide to its owners a safe and green investment that delivers good risk-adjusted returns over time and a predictable and increasing annual cash dividend. Our aim is to become a significant forest owner in Europe.
How we work
As foresters and investors, we believe forests should be managed not for short term returns, but for generations to come – both when thinking of financial returns, potential risks and environmental aspects. We feel a great responsibility - that our forests are managed sustainably and for the long term according to available best practice, that we take good care of our employees, and that we do not tolerate any kind of corrupt behavior.
Local Management
In order to minimize risks and secure sustainable returns, we only operate through our own in-house, local, forest management teams in the countries where we are investing in. Currently we are present in Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania and the UK. During the past 10 years we have built and trained a modern forest operations organization comprising of ca 100 professionals.
Forest management
Forest management includes both silvicultural management of our properties as well as wood harvesting, which are two important aspects requiring attentive boots-on management from the best local forestry professionals. We aspire to apply modern and scientifically proven forest management methods according to available best practice in combination with long term environmental sustainability of our forests. Our own foresters, who are out in our forests every day, and who have been following same properties for many years, have unrivalled knowledge and experience of the particular conditions, possibilities and local risks. All this knowledge, experience and information is documented in our forest management plans and in our forest management IT-systems, which provide instant and detailed information of particular conditions and ongoing operations wherever we are present. This IT system is unique, and developed by us, to serve our specific needs customized for our exact processes and legislations we operate in. When our forests reach maturity, they are harvested in a sustainable manner, and according to local regulations. Generally, we are on average harvesting around 80% of the annual growth. This means that our forests are never harvested irresponsibly – on the contrary - we are building up growing forest stock volumes on our properties for the long term, for future generations.
We are independent
When selling harvested wood, we are always acting freely, with no long-term commitments, on the market. This is enabling us to feel free when and at what price we want to sell our wood and can therefore choose the best possible timing giving us the best possible returns.