Roe Highway Logistics Park is the largest industrial and logistics park to be established in Perth in more than a decade. MHD sits down with Judd Dyer, Director at Hesperia to find out more about the opportunity.
Western Australia is the only state in Australia to experience economic growth in 2019-20. Business investment grew by 9.3 per cent, the strongest growth in eight years and growth in Western Australia’s domestic economy for 2019-20 is the strongest since 2012-13.
According to Western Australia’s government, the state confronted COVID-19 from a position of strength. The growth in the midst of a pandemic was underpinned by strong business investment and driven in part by the mining sector as it was able to continue to operate.
The strong economy of Western Australia has continued to drive demand for well-located industrial land in the central sub-region space. “It’s very rare to find centrally located large pieces of land for industrial purposes in Western Australia,” Judd Dyer, Director at Hesperia says.
In early 2015, responding to the diminishing supply of premium and well-connected industrial land, Western-Australian property developer Hesperia identified the potential for a new industrial park in Kenwick.
At that time, the site comprised approximately 30 separately owned rural-residential land holdings. Extensive negotiations to acquire the various landholdings were completed in 2017 and in early 2019, Hesperia started developing Roe Highway Logistics Park. The industrial park has now become the largest industrial estate to be established in Perth in more than a decade.
“Roe Highway Logistics Park offers tenants and businesses a competitive edge when it comes to supply chain efficiencies,” Judd says.
The park is one of the few rail-side industrial developments in Perth with direct freight rail access and RAV7 connectivity, offering tenants maximised freight movement efficiency.
“When you think about logistics at its core, it’s about minimising double handling and reducing travel time. With this site you can operate truly multimodal operation, with road, rail, air and port connectivity,” Judd says.
The acceleration of e-commerce is also dominating the Western Australian consumer market much like it is in the larger cities of Sydney and Melbourne and this is also driving a need for logistics operations to be as centrally located as possible.
Located on the corner of Roe Highway and Welshpool Road East within 13 kilometres of the Perth CBD and five kilometres from Perth Airport, Roe Highway Logistics Park will also benefit from rail freight access via the Kenwick Freight Rail Facility due to be completed next year.
With only a limited number of land opportunities remaining, Roe Highway Logistics Park can cater to requirements from 2,000 sqm to over 50,000 sqm and a number of big brands are already running their operations out of the park.
One aspect of industrial property in Western Australia that is different to the east coast of Australia is that there is less instances of speculative building. “We tend to operate more on a pre-lease model here in Western Australia. But what that does allow us to do is develop a more tailor-made building for every client. Every tenant has specific requirements, and we are able to cater to these,” Judd says.
With industrial property of this standard and location in Western Australia hard to find, it’s not surprising that Roe Highway Logistics Park is already 80 per cent committed.
Victorian-based logistics provider Silk Contract Logistics operates out of the park from a 21,500 sqm warehouse across a four-hectare lot. In addition to Silk, major tenants include Northline, BP Australia, CHEP, Expro and KTrans.
A further guiding principle of the development was sustainability, and Hesperia has committed to this across design and functionality of the site. “For many major international companies, sustainability is at the forefront of their business decisions and we have considered this across the design. To this end, we are pushing to reach carbon neutrality within our own business over the next few years, and we also have a heavy focus on energy, recycling, carbon offset and water efficiencies,” Judd says.
Furthermore, Hesperia recognised the importance of making an industrial park a place where people want to work with amenities and opportunities for creating community. “We have deliberately focused on making sure that every employee and visitor to the site has an opportunity to refresh and take a break at the café with food and beverage options,” Judd says.
For Judd, some of the existing industrial sites tend to have a kettle in the kitchen at the back of the shed but he says thankfully that has changed and he is passionate about creating desirable places to work for the logistics industry.
“We have created areas where you can go and refresh or have a meeting. Having amenities for employees is now something that is on the agenda for many large corporations and we are proud that we have created a place where people can have a bite to eat and some options for taking breaks,” Judd says.
For more information about Roe Highway Logistics Park and final land opportunities, visit – rhlp.com.au.