Real estate investor Greenoak has announced the purchase of 720,000 m2 of logistics space across 22 assets in France and Spain as part of its strategy to acquire assets in Europe’s key logistics nodes.
The investments form part of Greenoak Europe Fund II, which closed at €656 mln of equity. Alongside co-investment capital, Greenoak is able to invest over €900 mln of equity into European real estate assets.
Greekoak declined to reveal the name of the vendors and to disclose the financial details of the transaction.
The French investments, acquired through two portfolio transactions, comprise 20 warehouses and cold storage assets, primarily located around the main hubs along the north-south primary logistics corridor between Paris, Lyon, and Marseille. Major tenants include food retailers Carrefour and CDiscount.
The Spanish investments comprise two fully leased cold storage assets located in the core Spanish logistics markets around Barcelona and Valencia, on the Spanish Mediterranean coast.
These latest acquisitions take Fund II’s continental European logistics platform of assets and development projects to 1.8 million m2 and Greenoak’s total investment in the European logistics sector over the past four years to approximately 2.2 million m2.
Greenoak’s platform is comprised almost exclusively of large (average size 37,000 m2 per building) modern facilities, located primarily in key gateway logistics nodes and capital cities of Europe including Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Greater Rotterdam, and the key northern Italian Logistics hub of Verona, Italy.
'Large, well-located, modern, high-quality logistics facilities are the key real estate asset for today’s economy,' commented John Carrafiell, co-founder of Greenoak. 'With continental Europe 10 to 15 years behind the USA and the UK in the provision of state-of-the-art facilities, the fundamentals driving occupier demand are strong. Establishing a platform of size and scale focussing exclusively on such facilities enables our team and its partners to serve the needs of a diverse range of companies in the sector who are growing and have a voracious appetite for quality space in the right location. With limited competition able to be effective in a multiple of continental Europe’s largest economies, Greenoak’s significant presence and development activity positions our platform well across the continent as a leading investor and developer in the sector.'
Greenoak entered the French market in December 2017, acquiring a 225,000 m2 portfolio of French logistics assets. The portfolio comprises four large warehouses purpose-built to institutional standards, located in Paris and other leading logistics nodes in France.
Greenoak acquired its first Dutch asset in December 2017, purchasing off-market two Dutch warehouses totalling 58,000 m2, located in a key logistics node in the Netherlands.
In Italy, Greenoak purchased its first asset in 2016. Since then it has acquired eight logistics assets and development projects totalling over 400,000 m2. All assets are modern logistics properties, located around Milan and Verona.
Greenoak has been an active developer and operator in the Spanish logistics market since 2015 and during 2017, acquired six logistics assets and turn-key developments in Spain totalling 250,000 m2.
