HIH Invest Real Estate has acquired a storage and manufacturing warehouse of 6,193 m2, located at Bordeaux-Strasse 3 in Bremen.
Financial details were not disclosed.
The property was sold by KBK Immobilien, a management company owned by Emotion Warenhandels, the trading company which rented the building on a twelve-year lease that includes a renewal option.
The acquisition took the form of an asset deal on behalf of HIH Deutschland+ Core Logistik Invest, an open-ended special AIF. The company Robert C. Spies Industrial Real Estate acted as adviser and estate agent during the transaction.
The building, constructed in 2011/2012, occupies a plot of nearly 13,000 m2 and features a roof-mounted photovoltaic system.
Out of the total lettable area of 6,193 m2, warehouse space accounts for 5,853 m2, and office and social areas for 340 m2.
'Even though the property was built for the requirements of Emotion Warenhandels, it has considerable potential for alternative use. It comes with flexible access options, including dock levellers and ground level docks, and could be partitioned into three separate sections.
'An added perk is its location inside the Hansalinie trading estate, which has direct access to the A1 motorway and lies in close proximity to the Bremer Kreuz motorway interchange and near the inner city of Bremen,' said Maximilian Tappert, head of transaction management logistics at HIH Invest.
Emotion Warenhandels manufactures primarily bathroom interiors, which it sells online to end consumers. Its recently completed corporate headquarters are located in the immediate vicinity of the logistics property just purchased by HIH Invest.
'We are funding the acquisition entirely from equity. We have ways to generate attractive returns from the property even without leverage. The acquisition demonstrates once again that we, as an investment manager with a robust equity base, have the capacity to identify exciting opportunities and to act on them even in challenging market situations,' said Andreas Strey, co-head of fund management and head of logistics fund management at HIH Invest.
The HIH Deutschland+ Core Logistik Invest vehicle is categorised as an Article-8 fund. It aims for a target volume of €500 mln or more, the focus being on modern core logistics real estate with excellent alternative use potential and high ESG standards.
While the main investment destination is Germany, around 30% of the fund capital is to be invested in neighbouring countries (the Netherlands, France, Austria).
The legal and tax due diligences for the transaction were conducted by the law firm of Baker Tilly based in Frankfurt am Main. Logivest was responsible for the commercial due diligence, while the technical and ESG due diligence were done by Gleeds Deutschland from Braunschweig.
