Paraguay is one of the poorest countries in South America. It also has one of the highest rates of tropical deforestation in the world.
London-based real assets investment firm Astarte Capital teamed up with Swedish forest management company Silvipar in 2021 to acquire and develop forestland for sustainable agroforestry in the land-locked country. The partners blew past their original $200 million target, raising $325 million from more than two dozen investors. Astarte kicked in $30 million of its own capital.
The Silvipar Astarte Impact Forestry Fund “is shaping up to be among the largest and most diverse institutional capital pool ever assembled for investment in Paraguay,” the partners said in a statement.
The fund will build on Silvipar’s portfolio of roughly 15,000 acres of managed forestland in Paraguay. The partners are looking to acquire about 200,000 acres of forestland that can be sustainably managed and low-productivity farmland that can be converted for agroforestry. They’ll tap carbon markets for additional revenues.
A quarter of the land will be reserved for permanent conservation.
Their goal is to plant 60 million trees and create 3,000 direct jobs.
