Warburg-Pincus-backed New Ease has established a partnership with Canada’s QuadReal Property to invest up to US$1bn (€850m) in Chinese logistics assets.
The New Ease Gold Development vehicle, which targets first and second-tier cities, has been seeded with a prime land site in Suzhou, which is to be developed into a 140,000sqm logistics facility servicing the greater Shanghai area.
Peter Kim, managing director of Asia QuadReal Property, told IPE Real Assets: “We believe in the growth of China’s e-commerce market. E-commerce composed 45% of all retail sales in China last year, in a country with the world’s highest number of internet users at roughly one billion people. Yet, China’s e-commerce penetration rate currently stands at less than 25%.”
Kim said QuadReal believed that e-commerce would increasingly become an important component of consumer spending in China, and that logistics should be a primary beneficiary of such expansion in commercial activity.
QuadReal is an existing investor in China with a portfolio of industrial assets throughout China. It also has several office assets invested in Shanghai and Hong Kong.
Sun Dongping, founder and chairman of New Ease, said the establishment of the partnership with QuadReal was “a recognition of New Ease’s capabilities and strong track record”.
“We will continue to execute on the identified pipelines, and expand the portfolio with more quality assets, providing a platform for investors to access institutional-quality opportunities in top-tier markets in China,” he said.
IPE Real Assets understands that the partnership with QuadReal is the second platform that New Ease has launched with a foreign partner this year.
New Ease established a joint venture with Singapore’s GIC to invest in industrial and logistics real estate in Shanghai early this year, according to industry sources.
New Ease has worked as an operator and developer for the UK private equity firm Actis, and for JP Morgan. These two entities have invested approximately US$200m and US$600m respectively with the firm.
Co-founded by Warburg Pincus and Sun Dongping in 2018, New Ease manages a US$5bn portfolio of more than 5m sqm of projects that are in operation or under development.
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