Wealthy Wyllie family making waves with Aventuur’s $100m Perth surf park

Perth is known for its beaches but a group of investors believe there’s demand for an artificial wave surfing park. They then want to roll out their ambitious plans overseas.

An artist’s impression of the proposed Perth Surf Park. Photo: Supplied

Perth’s wealthy Wyllie family has agreed to be a cornerstone investor for a $100m surf park to be built near Perth, the first of an ambitious rollout of similar facilities in New Zealand and across North America.

The Wyllie family is among a group of investors backing the privately held Aventuur, started by some surf-loving former investment bankers, who believe there is significant demand from surfers and investors for their artificial wave parks built in urban locations.

Aventuur’s management says the funds raised from the Wyllie family and other investors, including Hearts and Minds chief investment officer Charlie Lanchester and Inloop founder Geoff Austen, will allow it to begin construction on the Perth asset by mid-2024 ahead of a hoped for opening in late 2025. Plans for the group’s first facility at Jandakot in Perth’s southern suburbs include a 2.2ha open-water lagoon creating waves for almost 100 surfers at once, as well as bars, restaurants and a function centre, retail outlets, accommodation, wellness facilities and a playground.

Perth may be famous for its beaches and summer weather, but Aventuur chairman Andrew Ross – who built the URBNSURF project in Melbourne – told The Australian that his company believes it can fill a gap in the market in Western Australia.

“Despite our beautiful beaches and coastline, the surf in Perth is often lacking. There’s a huge population of surfers in the metro area who don’t want to have to drive hours for quality waves, and an untapped market of people who haven’t tried surfing because they’re afraid of the ocean,” Ross says.

“That, combined with the tourism potential from the eastern states and Southeast Asia, makes Perth the perfect location for our first project in Australia.”

Wyllie non-executive director Luke Wyllie and Aventuur chairman Andrew Ross.

Wyllie Group, the family boutique investment group headed by rich lister Rhonda Wyllie and her children, is adding its Aventuur investment to a portfolio that includes the Perth Convention Centre, the Murray River Farm cattle business and Hillarys Marina in Perth.

“We’re always looking for investments that excite and inspire us, and that can make a real difference in Western Australia. Wyllie has a diverse portfolio, and we hold strategic positions in projects that seek to have a meaningful, enduring and positive impact on communities,” Wyllie Group non-executive director Luke Wyllie says.

“We ran the deal through our investment process and, together with the positive community benefit, we were impressed by the strong capability of the management team and compelling return profile – over both short and longer-term horizons – against other development opportunities we’ve been shown.”

Aventuur is raising a combination of debt and equity for the project, a strategy it will roll out for other assets it wants to build around the world, and has raised funds from investors for a central management company.

Co-founded by former Deutsche Bank project financier Nick Edelman and Richard Duff, who previously worked at Goldman Sachs JBWere and investment firm Fox River Partners, Aventuur plans to follow the Perth project with another near Auckland in partnership with Sir John Kirwan that includes and on-site data centre and seven hectare solar farm.

Aventuur then has a pipeline of potential projects across the US, where its team is actively looking for sites in Austin, Dallas, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Jacksonville. The plans are ambitious and Aventuur requires $US50m-$100m in development capital for each project at a time when debt funding is becoming more ­expensive.

But Edelman, who is based in Los Angeles, says he believes demand for sports lifestyle facilities like urban surf parks should exceed supply, based on market research and examples such as the Topgolf golf-themed entertainment business bought by Callaway for $US2.6bn in 2021.

“We truly believe that the US has a supply-side problem, not a demand-side problem, given the aspirational nature of the sport. We’ve undertaken a huge amount of demographic and psychographic research in the US, and … given demand, you could likely build two or three in Dallas-Fort Worth, three to five in greater Los Angeles and three to five in Greater New York,” Edelman says.

“There’s a demonstrated demand for lifestyle sports and activities – with around 16,000 golf courses, 450 ski resorts and 90 Topgolf (centres) in the US – but there’s only three operational surf parks. While I don’t think we need to build 16,000 surf parks, there’s a really compelling case for at least 20 to 30.”

The proposed surf park will be able to generate 1000 waves an hour.

The genesis of the idea for Aventuur goes back to Edelman’s days in investment banking, where he focused on project financing in renewable energy infrastructure at Deutsche Bank in Hong Kong, New York and Singapore – where he rediscovered his love for surfing after growing up in Sydney.

“I started travelling to Bali regularly, which was a great contrast to the more corporate and orderly environment of Singapore. After a while, I started searching further afield for more uncrowded waves. I began exploring the islands of West Sumatra, and it was on those adventures that I came across a group called Pegasus Surf Lodges.”

Edelman had studied in England with Duff before they both embarked on financial industry careers, but the pair would reunite and help run Pegasus with its founder for a time that Edelman describes as “one of the most fun and memorable experiences of my life … leaving the ivory tower of Deutsche Bank and moving into running the operations of a remote surf report business”.

Meanwhile, the artificial wave industry was emerging with new technologies. Investors in Pegasus, aware of Edelman and Duff’s financial background, asked them to look into the potential of the sector.

At first, they couldn’t get the economics to stack up.

But they have since struck a deal with Spanish company Wavegarden, which uses technology that Edelman says is a game-changer both in sporting and financial terms.

“Before the advent of the Wavegarden, we analysed the technologies available in market, and our conclusion on the category was that the assets didn’t justify their cost of capital. The primary reasons were the amount of waves created, or frequency, was too low, and two, the amount of surfers that you could have in the water, or occupancy, was not enough.

“Wavegarden changed the game with their Cove technology, which is able to produce up to 1000 waves per hour, and have 80 surfers in the water at a time.

“This opened up the operational model, and made the category commercially viable.”

Aventuur has acquired the exclusive rights to Wavegarden technology for nine US markets, and wants to couple that with Australian beach culture.

“For our projects in the US – particularly in inland locations – we are planning to export the best of antipodean surfing and coastal culture,” Edelman says.

“In Australia, we are blessed in that our lifestyle often revolves around spending time at the beach … and the communities that form around them. Think Bondi on a beautiful summer’s morning.

“We think it would be special to share that culture with people in markets like Dallas or Austin.”