Wrexham Industrial Estate sprawls across 550 hectares near the border with England
Elite Partners Capital has acquired a distribution facility in northern Wales for more than £30 million ($36 million), as the Singapore-based fund manager continues to amass a portfolio of industrial and commercial assets across Europe.
The two-warehouse distribution centre is within Wrexham Industrial Estate, a 550 hectare (1,359 acre) government-owned campus near the Welsh border with northwestern England. The facility provides 723,114 square feet (67,179 square metres) of built-up space and is fully leased to retailer Shop Direct Home Shopping, Elite Partners said Wednesday in a release.
The asset represents the first UK acquisition for Elite Logistics Fund II, the second in Elite Partners’ pan-European fund series targeting prime logistics assets in high-growth and defensive sectors.
“We believe that this asset is particularly well-placed to benefit from the highly dynamic logistics market in the UK, where the demand for logistics warehouses remains strong and resilient,” said Elite Partners CEO Victor Song.
Growing European Portfolio
For the Wrexham transaction, in which Colliers acted on its behalf, Elite Partners paid roughly £41 ($49) per square foot of built area at the distribution centre, which occupies 19 hectares of land.
Victor Song of Elite Partners Capital
The Singaporean firm previously acquired four UK commercial properties, including an eight-storey office building in Scotland’s largest city of Glasgow in September 2020 for £70 million through its UK Commercial Fund III, which aims to have assets under management of up to £200 million.
In August 2020, Elite Partners announced its acquisition of a PepsiCo warehouse near Warsaw for more than €30 million (now $30.7 million) from P3 Logistics Park, a wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC.
The Poland deal was made via the Macquarie-backed Elite Logistics Fund I, which invested in as many as 18 properties across Poland, Germany, Spain, Czechia and Britain before selling a dozen assets to Blackstone for €520 million ($586 million) in late 2021.
Elite Partners was founded in 2017 by shareholders including Song, who had worked on the investment team at ESR-REIT’s forerunner, Cambridge Industrial Trust, and later served as head of asset management at Viva Industrial Trust, which merged with ESR-REIT in 2018. This year, ESR-REIT merged with ARA Logos Logistics Trust to form ESR-Logos REIT.
Lion City Investors Leap
The UK and continental Europe have proved attractive to Singapore-based investors searching far and wide for logistics assets.
On Thursday, SGX-listed Cromwell E-REIT announced the acquisition of its third logistics asset in the UK for £18.9 million after selling an office property in Finland for €16.2 million.
Last month, Frasers Logistics & Commercial Trust said it would acquire a logistics project in northwestern England for £101 million ($124 million), marking the S-REIT’s fourth industrial investment in the UK.
FLCT is buying the property in the county of Cheshire from Birmingham-based Stoford Properties, which will develop a logistics facility with 667,185 square feet of lettable area on the 14.4 hectare site.
In March, Singapore-based warehouse giant GLP announced the €1.2 billion ($1.3 billion) first closing of its Europe Income Partners III fund, which aims for more than €1.5 billion in total equity commitments and over €3 billion in assets under management once fully deployed.
EIP III is seeded with a portfolio of 34 logistics assets spanning 16 million square feet of space in locations across Europe.
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