The UK-based property company SEGRO has bought logistics property assets worth €470m in Germany, France and Poland from the property investment companies Tristan Capital Partners and AEW Capital.
The deal extends SEGRO’s move into the logistics property sector. The company which is structured as a ‘REIT’ (Real Estate Investment Trust’) now owns a portfolio split across the continent with one third of its capital invested in Poland, just under one third in France and Germany with smaller amounts in the Czech Republic and the Benelux. Grouped together within ‘SEGRO European Logistics Partnership’ (SELP), the developments are generally new, with 80% being completed within the past five years and one- in Leipzig- yet to be finished. The newly acquired property includes a substantial proportion based in Germany, accounting for more than half of the value of the deal including warehousing complexes in Hamburg, Leipzig, Berlin and Ingolstadt.
On its creation last year SELP was “seeded with €974 million of logistics assets and land”, with this latest acquisition expanding that to €1.5bn including “2.3 million sq m of lettable space as well as 135 hectares of land, of which 22 hectares are already under development”.
SELP is a joint venture between SEGRO and the Canadian pension fund managers PSP Investment, the latter extending Canadian pension funds appetite for investments in logistics orientated infrastructure . Its objective is to create what its calls “a leading Continental European logistics platform”. At its initiation SELP stated that its objective was to expand through organic growth or acquisition to at least €2bn worth of assets in the “coming years”, which may imply further acquisitions.
SEGRO said that the customer base for the newly acquired properties was similar to that of its existing one, with major logistics providers such as “Deutsche Post, Kuehne and Nagel Group, DB Schenker and Geodis” as tenants.