Industrial market in CEE grew by 30% in 2008

The total Central European industrial stock reached 10.5 million m² last year, as supply grew by 2.5 million m2, or 31%, between January and December 2008, Cushman & Wakefield has said in a new report.

Most of the new industrial space was built in Poland (1.3 million m2), 17% more than new construction in 2007. Hungary also performed very well with 253,981 m² newly built, a 106% increase in construction compared with 2007. Slovakia retained the level of supply at over 275,000 m². Following a number of record-breaking years, the Czech Republic slowed down by 30% with 646,211 m² newly constructed last year, Cushman & Wakefield said.

'Given its size, the Polish market is still unsaturated and can in medium term absorb a large quantity of new space. The Hungarian market tended to stagnate in the previous years and it made up for the previous uninspiring results last year. Slovakia has upheld its construction thanks to the inflow of foreign investments and logistic shifts. However, we don’t expect the Central European countries to break the previous years' records,' said Ferdinand Hlobil, head of the CEE industrial team at Cushman & Wakefield.

The Czech market started to slow down in the first half of 2008 mainly as a result of the reduced inflow of foreign investments, with the global crisis added on top of that in the second half of the year. Yet the construction exceeded the results of 2006 when more than half a million square metres of modern industrial space were built in this country. 'For this year, we expect a further decrease, as many projects have been cancelled or put on hold until later,' Hlobil added.