Rockcastle picks up another Polish shopping centre for €52m

Rockcastle Global Real Estate has acquired its fourth operational shopping centre in the Silesian region of Poland.

The Mauritius and Johannesburg-listed investor has acquired Platan shopping centre in the Silesian city of Zabrze in southern Poland from Germany's Triuva (formerly IVG Institutional Funds) for just under €52 mln.

Platan opened in 2003 and features 75 retailers over 25,340 m2. The tenants include including a hypermarket, fashion & footwear outlets as well as a services and food and beverage. The shopping centre and an adjacent retail park have a combined annual footfall of almost 4 million visitors.

Rockcastle was advised in the transaction by Cushman & Wakefield, Weil, Gotshal & Manges and CMT. The vendor was represented by JLL, Linklaters and Arcadis.

'This acquisition brings the total number of shopping centres in our portfolio to four existing centres, two new developments and we are actively pursuing numerous other retail opportunities in Poland which we expect to conclude in 2016,' said Spiro Noussis, CEO of Rockcastle Global Real Estate.

News of the deal comes days after Rockcastle completed the acquisition of the 107,000 m2 Silesian Retail Portfolio, comprising shopping centres Karolinka (in the city of Opole) and Pogoria (D¹browa Górnicza) for €221 mln. The vendor in that deal was Blackrock, which inherited the assets when it took over fund manager MGPA.

Rockcastle's first operating Polish shopping centre was the 18,000 m2 Solaris Centre (Galeria Handlowa) in Opole. It acquired Solaris in March this year for €52 mln, reflecting an initial yield of 7.7%.