A joint venture between Harrison Street and Trinity Asset Management is backing the launch of a new life sciences real estate investor and operator for the UK market.
While Harrison Street is an investment manager focusing on alternative real assets, Trinity Investment Management is a specialist life sciences operator, developer and manager which owns Britain’s largest portfolio of science parks.
The joint venture is backing a combine between BioCity Group, an accelerator and venture investor, with Knowledge Factory, a science parks manager, and Trinity Investment Management, which have together formed the We Are Pioneer Group.
We Are Pioneer will operate across 10 science parks throughout England, Scotland and Wales, hosting 650 businesses, the equivalent of 10% of the country’s life sciences sector.
Its £120 mln (€138 mln) merger deal will create a £450 mln business working across a total of 2.6 million ft2 (242,000 m2) of labs and offices.
According to the parties, We Are Pioneer Group will become the first nationwide business to combine education, investment and business support with the development and asset management of lab space.
As part of the deal, the JV is acquiring 12 properties comprising 488,000 ft2 of state-of-the-art science parks in Nottingham, Cardiff and Glasgow, where additional development will take place. These will be managed by We Are Pioneer Group, which will be a separate business from Harrison Street.
Global stage
Paul Bashir, CEO of Harrison Street’s European business, said: 'The pandemic has put life sciences facilities on the global stage, yet the UK has a distinct supply-demand imbalance that is prohibiting this sector from truly flourishing.
'Creating the first nationwide, vertically-integrated platform gives us the scale and skills to make a real positive impact, working not just with exciting biotech firms but with the many academics and institutions that BioCity has developed relationships with over the years.
'Our track record in life sciences across North America has taught us many valuable lessons about the value of creating ecosystems and the premium investors can derive from carefully aligning operational asset management with investment.
'Our partners in Trinity have created a market-leading business and this new evolution as We Are Pioneer Group will raise the bar for one of Britain’s most exciting emerging asset classes.'
Richard O’Boyle, executive director at Trinity, said: 'Life sciences is a truly unique part of the real estate universe that requires intensive management and requires considerable networks to connect and support our tenants.
'We Are Pioneer Group is the logical next step for our partnership with Harrison Street and it gives them a fully-integrated European life sciences platform to rival the scale of what the US has to offer.'
Assets
Nottingham, where three of the properties are located, has an established life science presence backed by a highly-skilled local workforce and two large research universities. The properties include a range of lab categories and flexible working space.
The Glasgow property, located on 20 acres, is a former Merck research and development site which consists of a mix of lab and office space.
Cardiff Edge is an eight-building science park that is currently 98% leased and offers the potential to develop an additional 460,000 ft2 of lab and office space.
Current tenants include Cytiva (formerly GE Healthcare Life Sciences), a global technology and services provider that advances and accelerates the development and manufacturing of therapeutics and is backed by Danaher Corporation.
