Centuria Industrial REIT has announced the acquisition of a modern 9,554sqm cold storage facility in Queensland, occupied by one of the largest privately owned companies in the Australasia food sector.
The Ormeau property in Queensland is 100 per cent occupied by Markwell Cold Storage, a subsidiary of Competitive Foods Australia. The asset provides a WALE of 6.5 years at acquisition.
This cold storage asset grows CIP’s asset base of facilities providing refrigerated logistics space, expanding on the recently completed development of Townsville Regional Distribution Centre for Woolworths.
In FY21, Centuria Industrial REIT (CIP) portfolio has now expanded by six assets worth a combined $523m, continuing to enforce its position as Australia’s largest ASX-listed domestic pure play industrial REIT.
The deal was completed by Gavin Bishop (Head of Industrial Capital Markets, Australia) at Colliers International and he said the cold storage sector has been a big focus for investors in 2020, due to he favourable underlying drivers of population growth, growing food consumption and the rise of the Asian middle class.
“We estimate that there is $26 billion in capital looking to invest in the industrial and logistics sector. With just over $3.5 billion trading so far in 2020, it highlights the significant mismatch between supply and demand and the significant volume of unsatisfied capital looking to be placed,” Gavin said.
He noted that in the nine months to Q3 2020, $3.57 billion ($10 million +) has traded within the sector and compares to $3.38 billion at the same point in 2019. For Brisbane, just over $530 million has traded in 2020.
Positioned in the Yatala Enterprise Area, a key corridor between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, the Ormeau site totals 2.1ha.
“A key growth thematic for CIP is the non-discretionary, food distribution and cold storage industries and this facility increases the Trust’s exposure to food and cold storage related users to almost 30 per cent by income,” Jesse Curtis, CIP Fund Manager, said.
“The modern, high-quality Ormeau property has been fully occupied by the well-established Maxwell Cold Storage since its construction and complements the existing array of high-quality, blue-chip tenant customers within the CIP portfolio.”
The property is located at 1 Lahrs Road, Ormeau. The acquisition will be funded with CIP’s existing debt facilities.