Warburg-Backed StorHub Enters Aussie Market With $300M Equity Commitment

Asia Pacific self-storage operator StorHub Group on Thursday announced its expansion into Australia, with the Warburg Pincus-backed company touting $300 million in equity commitments to support the Down Under business unit.

The Aussie platform is seeded with five assets in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra with a total gross floor area of 56,210 square metres (605,000 square feet), building on StorHub’s existing footprint of 655,000 square metres across 480 locations in Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, mainland China and Hong Kong.

To lead the charge into its seventh regional market, the group has appointed industry veteran Simon DeGaris as CEO of StorHub Australia. DeGaris spent five years as national acquisitions manager for Sydney-based Kennards Self Storage before running his own mini-shed consulting shop for nearly a decade.

“The self-storage industry in Australia is at an inflection point, driven by multiple favourable tailwinds, including record population growth fuelled by immigration and attractive demographics, increasing residential density, and evolving working from home conditions,” DeGaris said in a release. “These factors are creating a greater demand for modern, flexible and well-located self-storage.”

Further Expansion on the Cards

StorHub Australia’s first operating site in Rouse Hill, a northwestern suburb of Sydney, opened in August 2023 with a gross floor area of 12,300 square metres. The other seed assets include locations in the Sydney suburbs of Alexandria and Miranda, a store in Melbourne’s Clifton Hill and a site in national capital Canberra.

The platform plans a further expansion in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane via strategic acquisitions and developments, capitalising on a robust pipeline of opportunities, the group said.

StorHub was founded in 2019 by US private equity major Warburg Pincus, also a cornerstone investor of regional warehouse giant ESR. ESR’s Australia unit was launched in 2018 and has since grown to A$15.4 billion ($10 billion) in assets under management.

“StorHub is already a dominant player in Asia’s self-storage industry and it’s a natural step for StorHub to expand into and grow in Australia,” DeGaris said. “With the conviction of the growth prospects of the industry, support from Warburg Pincus and our strong value propositions to the customers, we believe StorHub Australia is well poised to become one of the leading self-storage platforms in the country.”

Regionwide Push Continues

Australia has more than 1,700 self-storage facilities nationwide, said Peter Guevarra, a director on JLL’s Asia Pacific research team, citing data from the Self-Storage Association of Australasia.

“The majority of investors choose to either invest in a platform with the intention of expanding within a specific country, driven by the need to establish operations that cater to local consumers, or leverage the operational expertise of an operator to expand their presence across multiple markets in Asia Pacific,” Guevarra told Mingtiandi.

The launch of StorHub’s Australian business follows the group’s acquisition of self-storage operators in Malaysia and Japan last year.

StorHub completed its acquisition of Storage Plus Corp, which has 35 locations across Japan, in a deal announced in September, with the move adding 9,290 square metres to the group’s portfolio.

The purchase from Japanese developer Ichigo’s Centro unit was revealed just over two weeks after StorHub acquired a majority stake in Malaysian self-storage operator Flexi Storage, giving the group a presence in the Southeast Asian nation with four locations in Kuala Lumpur and the Klang valley.