(LONDON) – Hines, the international real estate firm, has acquired a major logistics park in a prime strategic location in Poland on behalf of the Hines Pan-European Core Fund (HECF) from GLL Real Estate Partners (GLL), the fund manager which is part of the Macquarie Group, for an undisclosed price.
Located in Wrocław, a well-established European industrial submarket in the southwest of Poland near the German market, the 123,499-square-meter logistics park is fully leased to a global online retailer. The mezzanine warehouse facility was developed in 2015 by Panattoni Europe.
The acquisition is part of HECF’s ongoing strategy to increase exposure to urban logistics assets in key European locations with strong long-term growth prospects. It represents the latest in a string of significant acquisitions this year and closely follows the most recent purchase of a 19,418-square-meter complex at London’s Heathrow Airport.
The HECF was recently recognized as one of the top property funds in Europe, achieving the MSCI European Property Investment Award for the best performing pan-European balanced fund.
Peter Epping, Senior Managing Director and HECF Fund Manager at Hines, said: “This investment represents another significant acquisition in the expanding logistics portfolio of our fund. Like most of our logistics assets it is heavily driven by the ever-growing demand of online shopping as well as the access to skilled labor that the city of Wrocław provides. With the strong fundamentals of the local logistics market it fits well into our strategy of targeting supply constrained locations with attractive long-term growth prospects.”
Wojciech Rumian, Senior Managing Director, Country Head of Hines Poland, said: “The acquisition of this facility is an important addition to the portfolio of logistics assets managed by Hines in Poland. We are planning to grow this line of business in the near future and acquire more assets on behalf of Hines fiduciary capital as well as for third party clients. This transaction with the Hines Pan-European Core Fund is a building block of this strategy.”
Hines was advised by Greenberg Traurig, EY and CMT, and GLL was advised by CBRE, Dentons, PwC, and Sentient.
ENDS
Hines
Hines is a privately owned global real estate investment firm founded in 1957 with a presence in 225 cities in 25 countries. Hines has approximately $144.1 billion of assets under management, including $75.5 billion for which Hines serves as investment manager, including non-real estate assets, and $68.6 billion for which Hines provides third-party property-level services. The firm has 165 developments currently underway around the world. Historically, Hines has developed, redeveloped or acquired 1,426 properties, totalling over 472 million square feet. The firm’s current property and asset management portfolio includes 576 properties, representing over 246 million square feet. With extensive experience in investments across the risk spectrum and all property types, and a pioneering commitment to sustainability, Hines is one of the largest and most-respected real estate organizations in the world.
Since entering Europe in 1991, Hines has grown its European platform to include offices in 16 cities as well as a presence in 55 cities in 13 countries, with €22.7 billion of assets under management, including €19.8 billion for which Hines serves as an investment manager and €2.9 billion for which Hines provides third-party property-level services, in Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom.
Visit www.hines.com for more information.
Hines Pan-European Core Fund (HECF)
The Hines Pan-European Core Fund was set up in 2006 with the aim of providing investors with a resilient income profile derived from a diversified portfolio of high-quality assets located in inner-city locations across major European cities.
The Hines European Core has been awarded by MSCI as the strongest performing fund over the 3 years 2017-2019 among the European institutional balanced sector funds, with a total return of 8.45% p.a. during 2017-2019, 211 bps above the average return of the benchmark, making it one of the best performing core property funds in Europe.
As of Q2 2020 the HECF portfolio was 97.2% occupied with an aggregate value of c.€1.6bn. The portfolio of the Fund comprises 25 assets including forward commitments, invested in 15 city markets across eight different European countries.
GLL Real Estate Partners
Headquartered in Munich, GLL joined the Macquarie Group in June 2018 building out the real estate equity investment platform of Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets (MIRA). GLL manages real estate in Europe, the USA, Latin America and Australia with offices in 12 countries. GLL is a well-established provider of institutional real estate funds in Germany. Since its inception in 2000, the company invested over €16 billion on behalf of institutional investors, and currently manages more than 100 office, retail and logistics properties in 23 countries – a portfolio comprising more than €8 billion assets under management.
MIRA is one of the world’s leading alternative asset managers. For more than twenty-five years, MIRA has partnered with investors, governments and communities to manage, develop and enhance assets relied on by more than 100 million people each day. As at 31 March 2020, MIRA managed approximately €120 billion in assets that are essential to the sustainable development of economies and communities, including: 151 portfolio businesses, ~500 real estate properties and 4.8 million hectares of farmland.
