Two trading estates have been acquired by companies attempting to strengthen their Scottish portfolios. The deals — in the country’s national and industrial capitals — are worth more than £14m.
In Edinburgh, Aviva Insurance has paid Prestonfield Development Company (PDC) £9.6m for a multi-let industrial estate, close to the city centre. And in Glasgow, a joint venture between Lumina Real Estate Capital and Citivale has bought Dixon Blazes Industrial Estate for just over £4m from CBRE Global Investors.
As a partnership between J Smart & Co and The Walker Group, PDC developed Prestonfield Park which is now fully let to 11 tenants including the City of Edinburgh Council, Nairn’s Oatcakes, Howden Joinery and St Andrews Timber Supplies. The eight warehouse buildings, offering a total of 100,000 sq ft, reportedly generate more than £600,000 a year in rent.
“With a distinct lack of quality industrial stock within Edinburgh’s ring road and limited potential for further development, our client was attracted to the blend of tenant line up, quality of stock and good prospects for rental growth on such a prime in-town asset,” explained Mark Fleming, of Savills.
“Prestonfield Park is also relatively unique in that it combines a healthy lot size with a manageable number of tenants which is undoubtedly attractive to the institutional investor.”
He confirmed the estate attracted considerable pre-sale interest from the institutional market. “Savills was pleased to secure it for Aviva against a backdrop of hardening yields across the majority of sectors and regions,” he added.
Forty-six miles away in Glasgow the Lumina-Citivale created joint venture, LC Industrial, has taken control of the SouthPoint estate on the city’s Lawmoor Street. The investment vehicle was created in 2014 with £50m to spend on building a portfolio of industrial assets.
With one 8,650 sq ft vacant unit, SouthPoint’s anchor tenants are Travis Perkins and Matthew Clarke Wholesale. The site is said to produce £379,120 in rent. “We are very pleased the acquisition of SouthPoint as the first Scottish acquisition into the portfolio,” commented Citivale managing director, James Appleton-Metcalfe. “It offers the right blend of location and tenant profile, combined with asset management opportunities of refurbishment, void and rental growth.”
He also confirmed that LC was considering a number of further investments across Britain. “We want to capitalise on the strong growth in the UK regional economy by buying secondary assets and repositioning them through comprehensive refurbishment, re-gearing leases and minimising voids,” said Appleton-Metcalfe, while admitting: “We have a strong pipeline of deals already, including a number of off-market transactions.
“Our combination of local and specialist knowledge, speed of movement, entrepreneurial energy and a professional, diligent and analytical style enables us to locate exactly the kind of industrial property that our joint venture with Lumina is looking to invest in.”
South of the border, LC Industrial has recently purchased the 86-acre Humber Enterprise Park at Brough, near Hull, and an 110,000 sq ft industrial building at South Elmsall, near Wakefield.
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