Logos Enters New Zealand With $147M Auckland Project

Extending its antipodean buying spree, Logos Property has agreed to acquire a 10-hectare site in Auckland to develop a 55,000-square-metre logistics facility. The deal, the first in the country for the regional warehouse developer, comes after a rush of transactions in Australia and amid intense competition and fast growth.

“The New Zealand industrial and logistics sector has experienced strong growth over the past few years on the back of the country’s underlying economic fundamentals, increasing population and importantly the rise in ecommerce,” said Trent Iliffe, Joint Managing Director, Logos. The “site is an important and strategic first development for the group.”

The company announced the transaction on 10 July without disclosing the price of the acquisition. Reports in the Australian media put the final value of the project at A$200 million ($147 million).

Finding a Location in NZ’s Logistics Hub

The site is located in Auckland at the corner of Roscommon Road and Wiri Station Road about 23 kilometres from the country’s largest container port and about 8 kilometres from Auckland Airport. The Wiri suburb, on a major road system and with a dry port, is increasingly regarded as New Zealand’s logistics hub.

Fletcher Concrete and Infrastructure, a subsidiary of ASX-listed Fletcher Building, was the seller, according to the Australian Financial Review. The newspaper also reports that Logos will begin construction on the planned logistics estate early next year and that the total value of the project is expected to be about A$200 million ($147 million) after completion.

Logos is in discussions with existing customers at its other locations globally about taking space in the new warehouse development. Potential tenants include companies involved in FMCG, ecommerce and third-party logistics.

A Spate of Deals and Increasing Competition

Founded in 2010 by Iliffe, who formerly served with LaSalle Investment Management and JLL in China, together with partner John Marsh, Macquarie-backed Logos had invested a total of A$4 billion of equity investments in 14 projects by the end of 2017, with a potential sales value of A$9 billion.

Logos has ventures throughout the Asia-Pacific region, with more than 2.7 million square metres of leasable space in four countries: about 1.4 million square metres in Australia, 1 million square metres in China, 155,000 square metres in Indonesia and 224,000 square metres in Singapore. It is developing projects in India, along with Ivanhoe Cambridge and the Quadreal Property Group, and has a $484 million venture with Canada’s CPPIB and Ivanhoe Cambridge for the acquisition of southeast Asia logistics assets.

The company is particularly active in Australia. In early 2018, it introduced the A$500 million Logos Australia Logistics Portfolio, a fund backed by a single undisclosed investor. In March, Logos acquired two warehouses in Sydney, and in July it purchased a 27.5-hectare site in Melbourne to be developed into a 160,000-square-metre GLA logistics estate.

The deals come as competition heats up. Blackstone acquired a third portfolio of Australian logistics assets from the Goodman Group in late 2017 and has identified the country as one of its major focuses, while Singapore-listed Cache Logistics Trust purchased nine Blackstone-owned warehouses in Australia in early 2018. In July, Warburg Pincus-backed rival ESR acquired Charter Hall’s Commercial & Industrial Property (CIP) to establish a beachhead in Australia.