Barings, one of the world’s largest diversified real estate investment managers, has acquired a cold-storage logistics centre near Berlin on behalf of value-add strategy real estate fund BREEVA II from the BEOS Corporate Real Estate Fund Germany IV. The parties agreed not to disclose the purchase price.
The 68,000 sq m building complex at Seeberger Strasse 10 in Altlandsberg is divided into five units with traffic access from two sides. The 178,000 sq m plot also includes parking spaces for 445 cars and 43 lorries. It is leased in its entirety to retail logistics specialist Metro Logistics.
The cold-storage facility is a fit for BREEVA II’s logistics strategy and follows the acquisition of a 126,000 sq m portfolio in the Nordics and further assets in the United Kingdom and Italy.
The property was built as a specialised distribution hub for grocery logistics in 1995 and fully modernised in 2017. Around one third of the space is cooled to between 4-8 °C via an eco-friendly ammonia refrigeration system. The remaining spaces are also temperature-controlled and currently used as dry storage at a temperature of between 14-16 °C.
Sascha Becker, Managing Director and Country Head Real Estate Germany at Barings, says:
“Handling cold storage real estate requires specialist expertise in investment and asset management, which we have successfully built up and expanded upon in recent years. The decisive factor for this particular investment was the value-add potential combined with the strategic location at the A10 motorway, with excellent connectivity to Berlin’s inner city.”
Gunther Deutsch, Head of Transactions Europe and Managing Director Germany at Barings, adds: “We have been an active investor in temperature-controlled logistics across Europe for many years, especially in the Nordics, the Netherlands, the UK, Italy, France and Spain. Only this summer, we successfully divested a pan-European logistics portfolio which included cold-storage facilities in Germany. The asset class will remain a focus of our core and value-add strategies in 2022 because we see particularly strong potential for rental increases in the temperature-controlled space.”
Broker Colliers International Deutschland advised the seller in the transaction. Barings was advised by JLL, CMS (legal), Arcadis (technical) and Deloitte (tax).
