OneFortyOne announces largest Australian forestry land acquisition in a decade 

OneFortyOne, a leading forestry and sawmill business, is proud to announce the acquisition of the former New Forests managed Limestone Coast plantation forestry estate. This landmark acquisition, completed on 30 May 2025, marks a significant milestone in Australian forestry investment. 

OneFortyOne CEO Wendy Norris said the acquisition represents the first investment in forestry of this scale by an Australian company, in the past decade.  

“We are thrilled to expand our Green Triangle, Australian plantation forestry estate by 15%, adding close to 15,000 hectares of plantable area,” Wendy said. 

The acquisition includes approximately 14,800 hectares of mixed hardwood (Bluegum) and softwood (Radiata Pine) plantation resource or plantable area, within a total of 20,500 hectares of associated freehold land in the Green Triangle region and in Western Australia. New Forests has invested in the Limestone Estate since 2014, and the sale forms part of its Australia New Zealand Forestry Fund 2’s divestment process.  

SFM, the current property manager of this asset, will continue to provide hardwood and carbon-related management services to OneFortyOne, across the estate for the foreseeable future. 

“This is a significant acquisition for OneFortyOne and for the future potential of Australian softwood production,” Wendy added.  

Securing domestic sawlog supply from the mid-2050s 

OneFortyOne’s strategic decision to acquire the Limestone Coast estate is aimed at potentially securing domestic sawlog supply well into the future. “We are planning decades into the future and are focused on supporting our domestic customers by looking at ways to increase supply of sawlog,” Wendy explained.   

“This potential optionality of converting hardwood to softwood plantation estate, from short to long-term tree rotation, could provide additional certainty for domestic sawmill manufacturing and support domestic processing.”  

Importance of forestry for Australia’s sovereignty 

Plantation forestry plays a crucial role in supporting Australian sovereignty in construction and manufacturing. Australia is projected to require approximately 2.5 million new dwellings by 2034, an average of 225,000 new homes annually. By 2050, this demand figure is expected to exceed 250,000 new homes annually.  

In the absence of new domestic log supply (and consequently a constrained ability to grow domestic sawn structural timber production), this potential increased demand would likely be met by offshore imports, with imports potentially doubling from circa 20% share of sawn timber demand today, to over 40% by the 2050s.  

“This trend underscores both the supply challenges and emerging opportunities for the domestic forestry and wood products sector,” Wendy emphasised. 

“With domestic softwood log availability in the 2050s being dependent on decisions made today, we are proud to be making one such decision now that has the potential to support log supply, and inevitably housing construction, in the middle of this century.”