Delin makes first foray into Spanish logistics market as e-commerce booms

European logistics investor Delin Capital Asset Management has made its first foray into the Spanish market with the acquisition of a development site.

Delin bought the logistics development site, located in Alcala de Henares, for an undisclosed sum.

Delin said it previously acquired the nine-hectare site from a private vendor and has now also obtained a building permit for the speculative development known as Delin Alcala park, a multi-let 53,000sqm estate across two buildings.

According to Savills, the Spanish logistics market, in the fourth quarter of last year, was characterised by an undersupply of high-quality logistics space and a UNCTAD report has also highlighted the country’s rapidly growing e-commerce penetration.

In January last year, Delin announced plans to ramp up its projects in the Netherlands and target acquisitions in the UK and Spain.

To support this plan, the European logistics specialist said at the time that it had made a number of senior hires in the UK and Spain and was in talks discussions on a number of acquisitions in both countries.

Mark Kirkland, CEO of Delin, said: “With the experience we gained over the last couple of years delivering new grade-A logistics space in the Netherlands and having assembled a team of experts with deep local knowledge of the Madrid market, we have a high degree of confidence that this expansion of our operations into a new territory is well timed and will allow us to extract significant upside on behalf of our investors.”

José Espinosa, development director Spain of Delin, said: “The Spanish logistics market is one of the fastest growing in Europe, with e-commerce penetration considerably lower than many of its Western Europe neighbours.

“At the same time, there continues to be a shortage of mid and big box high-quality logistics space, especially in and around the major metropolitan conurbations of Madrid and Barcelona.”

Founded in 2012, Delin currently manages pan European portfolios of standing investments totalling nearly one million square metres of logistics space.

The manager’s current development projects amount to nearly 300,000sqm, with a longer-term development pipeline of more than 500,000sqm.