The Warburg Pincus Asia Real Estate Fund (WPARE) has set up a logistics and industrial real estate investment joint venture in South Korea with domestic firm MQ Logistics.

The QUBE Industrial venture has been seeded with four logistics warehouses located in Greater Seoul Area, comprising a diverse mix of stabilised, under construction and development assets, with a total gross floor area of more than 300,000sqm.

Andrew Kim, founder and chairman of MQ Logistics and James Lim have been appointed chairman and CEO of QUBE Industrial respectively.

Kim said the newly created venture was well-positioned to meaningfully accelerate growth and meet the evolving needs of both high-quality tenants and institutional investors in South Korea.

Li Fan, managing director at Warburg Pincus, said: “South Korea is rapidly becoming a meaningful market for both domestic and international institutional investors in industrial real estate.”

Fan spoke of the market momentum riding on several megatrends driving the continued demand for modern logistics warehouses from e-commerce and 3PL players. This had resulted in attractive supply and demand dynamics of institutional quality warehouses in key markets like Seoul and Busan, he said.

MQ manages a vertically integrated and self-funded warehouse development business and has had nearly 20 development projects over the past two decades with around US$2bn (€1.8bn) of assets under management. It has a portfolio of more than 1.4m sqm in prime sub-markets of Greater Seoul and Busan.

Warburg Pincus is one of the largest investors in Asia real estate, with over US$8bn invested in more than 70 real estate ventures.

To read the latest IPE Real Assets magazine click here.

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