International real estate firm Hines has secured with ING in Germany the first green loan facility for the Hines Pan-European Core Fund (HECF).
In addition to the €40 mln finance for Werfthaus, a prime office building located in Frankfurt, the loan will provide a further £32 mln in financing for an urban logistics park let to international handling company Dnata, located near the cargo area at Heathrow airport, London. Both assets display better than average energy performance levels as well as sustainability certificates such as DGNB and Breeam.
The facility will enable HECF to accelerate its strategy of pursuing sustainable and environmentally responsible real estate investments, Hines said.
Simone Pozzato, deputy fund manager for HECF at Hines, said: 'The fund’s investment strategy has always been clearly focused on making responsible and sustainable investments.
'However, this green loan facility gives us the capacity to deliver our investors’ ambitions of growing our portfolio of future-proofed assets where value and returns are aligned with environmental performance.
'Our partnership with ING and this loan commitment ensures not only great financial performance for our investors, but also a positive impact on communities where we invest, achieving the highest levels of sustainability across a wide range of areas, including energy performance, stakeholder engagement, building certificates, resilience and utilities management.'
Simone Schmidt, managing director of real estate finance of ING Germany, said: 'We are very proud to have issued ING Germany’s first green real estate loan to Hines, one of our top European clients. We are looking forward to more sustainable financing and further pan-european financing projects together.'
HECF was recently recognized as one of the top property funds in Europe, achieving the MSCI European Property Investment Award for the best performing pan-European balanced fund in the period comprised between 2017 and 2019.
In November 2020, HECF achieved the highest possible rating of five Green stars out of five in the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) for an unprecedented fourth year in a row.
