Baring Private Equity Asia’s (BPEA) real estate arm has raised US$1.2bn (€1bn) for its China logistics fund, which, when fully deployed, will have a portfolio size of around US$3.5bn.
BPEA Real Estate launched the fund in March last year to co-invest alongside BPEA Real Estate Fund II, which raised US$1bn in August 2018.
Mark Fogle, BPEA Real Estate managing director and head of real estate, told IPE Real Assets that the logistics fund itself completed its capital raising in July to bring the total raised to US$1bn.
In addition, the BPEA Real Estate Fund II had earmarked a portion of its capital to invest with the logistics fund, he said.
“We started looking at China logistics 4-5 years ago and we are building out our portfolio through a build-to-core development strategy under an OpCo-PropCo platform called Forest Logistics,” Fogle said.
“Since we established Forest Logistics in 2018 we have already allocated close to US$500m and have acquired 12 sites in only two years. We are looking to double or triple that number over the next few years.”
BPEA Real Estate Managing Director Alex Tse, formerly an investment director at Goodman Asia, told IPE Real Assets the fund had been able to secure sites in traditional tier-one cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, where new land for logistics development is notoriously scarce.
Fogle said he believed there would be investment opportunities in sectors such as hospitality post-COVID, caused by disruptions from the pandemic.
“The hospitality industry in several countries has gone (and is going) through a very hard time,” he said.
He said BPEA Real Estate did not have any hospitality exposure before COVID-19 but has since invested in the hospitality sector in Japan and was negotiating to buy its first hotels in Australia.
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