Clarion Partners makes €125m warehouse purchases in Germany

Clarion Partners Europe, investing on behalf of one of its funds, has acquired two distribution warehouses in Germany from funds advised by Ekistics Property Advisors.

IPE Real Assets understands that the assets located in Fritzlar and Walsrode were acquired for €125m.

The 50,000sqm Fritzlar asset and the 55,000sqm Walsrode asset were both originally purchased by Ekistics with the support of local partner Flos Capital Real Estate, in a forward funding transaction in 2019.

Thorben Schaefer, director of Clarion Partners Europe, said: “Adding these modern and sustainable properties, in strategically relevant locations and let to extremely strong counterparties, significantly strengthens our footprint in what is Europe’s most exciting logistics market.

“Both are tenant-critical assets serving as major distribution hubs and demonstrate our proven ability to originate and execute on investments despite increasing competition from different capital sources for exposure to the sector.”

Darius Skurevicius, director of Ekistics Property Advisors, said: “The sale of these prime logistics assets marks yet another successful conclusion of the business plan for Ekistics.

”The achieved result is evidence of the team’s ability to form strong partnerships with local developers and operating partners, such as Flos Capital, granting off-market access to some of the most sought-after real estate opportunities at pivotal times in the market.”

Clemens Stockhammer, managing partner of Flos Capital, said: “We are delighted with this successful result for our investor client Ekistics and that we could contribute as local operating partner along all processes from sourcing, lending, asset management and sale to this outcome.

”This has been enabled also by continued trust and confidence of our client in our expertise, local networks and execution capabilities in the German markets which we could materialize in our role as local partner and asset manager.”

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