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Billionaire developer Bob Ell has offloaded a Sydney logistics property for $70.6 million to Centuria Capital Group (ASX: CNI), marking the industrial property manager’s first acquisition for its $500 million mandate with US private investment firm Starwood Capital.
The property, located at North Rocks, was held by Ell’s private company Leda Holdings with proceeds from the off-market sale to be used by Leda to support its existing development pipeline.
“The divestment provides opportunities for Leda to build on its pipeline of industrial and residential projects, while opening the door to new prospects in the market,” says Ell, who recently ramped up his residential development interests on the Gold Coast with a near-$200 million acquisition of a 161ha site at Coomera.
Centuria says the acquisition of the logistics property has nearly doubled the assets under management for Starwood’s Last Mile Logistics Partnership (LMLP) which was announced in September this year with three seed assets totalling $76 million.
The Leda Holdings deal takes LMLP’s assets under management to $147million, with Centuria confident that it has a strong pipeline of opportunities to deploy the mandate’s remaining $350 million of capital.
The North Rocks property, located at 19-21 Loyalty Road, is a fully occupied multi-tenanted industrial facility totalling 19,231sqm with a low site coverage of about 41 per cent.
Centuria says its location just 4km from the Parramatta CBD positions the property as an ‘ideal infill industrial logistics asset’.
“This off-market acquisition is part of Centuria’s strategic industrial investment approach to secure assets for LMLP with short WALEs, which provide an opportunity to capitalise on strong rental reversion opportunities, driven by low vacancies within key urban markets,” says Centuria’s joint CEO Jason Huljich.
The North Rocks property has been acquired on a WALE (weighted average lease expiry) of 2.3 years.
Starwood, co-founded by US billionaire Barry Sternlicht, seeded LMLP with three Melbourne industrial properties which settled in early September. The investment vehicle was established to target supply-constrained infill industrial markets in Australia.
Centuria, one of Australia’s largest industrial landlords, says the Sydney acquisition brings gross real estate activity by the group so far in FY24 to more than $335 million, while adding to its $6 billion industrial portfolio.
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