Warburg-Backed Hale Buys $85M Campus in Melbourne’s Biggest 2026 Industrial Deal

Just over a month after closing on $532 million for its second Australia logistics fund series, Hale Capital Partners has purchased a Melbourne campus in what analysts describe as the city’s biggest industrial acquisition of this year. 

Sydney-based Hale has paid around A$120 million ($85 million) for Scoresby Industry Park in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, according to market sources, as the first acquisition under its refreshed strategy, which was backed with equity from founding investors Warburg Pincus and Canada’s Oxford Properties.

“This significant transaction represents the first Melbourne industrial transaction of 2026 exceeding the $100 million threshold,” said Chris O’Brien, executive director for industrial and logistics at CBRE, whose team brokered the sale.

The trade for the 50,211 square metre (540,000 square foot) property on Stud Road in Scoresby adds to Hale’s growing infill logistics strategy, with market sources indicating that around 25,000 square metres of the four-building complex is now vacant.

Eastern Precinct

At the reported consideration, Hale has paid around A$2,390 per square metre for Scoresby Industry Park, which occupies an 11.3-hectare site about 30 kilometres (18 miles) from Melbourne’s city centre in one of Victoria state’s most closely held industrial precincts.

Hale purchased the asset from IFM Investors, which had taken over the estate through its acquisition of ISPT late last year. ISPT, which managed the estate on behalf of its Core Fund, paid A$73 million ($51 million at current rates) for the property in 2015, according to Knight Frank.

Developed between 1997 and 2001, Scoresby Industry Park serves as the Australian headquarters for Nintendo and also counts public health provider Monash Health among its tenants.

The park abuts the Spooner family’s Caribbean Park, one of Australia’s largest privately held industrial estates, and sits within a precinct that market sources describe as offering limited opportunities for new supply.

Founded in 2021 by Robert McMickan and Nicholas Bradley, Hale last year acquired a cold-storage project in Oakleigh South, about 16 kilometres west of Scoresby Industry Park for A$50.3 million. 

Infill Play

The Scoresby acquisition reflects a deepening institutional conviction in Australia’s urban infill logistics market, where constrained land supply and sustained occupier demand have kept vacancy near historic lows in key east coast precincts.

In Sydney, Aliro Group earlier this month paid A$438 million ($310 million) for a pair of fully leased infill warehouses from Goodman Group in what Colliers ranked as the biggest Australian industrial deal of the year to that point.

That deal followed LaSalle Investment Management’s tie-up with local player Gibb Group in October last year to acquire a multi-tenanted industrial estate in western Sydney from private developer Leda Holdings for A$50 million.