Coffee with Craig Show – daily CRE news covering the CEE region, Friday, August 26, with Winston Norman, Editor and Chief of EuropaProperty.com.
Poland’s investment volume hits €2.88 billion in H1 2022
Cushman & Wakefield has released a summary of the first half of 2022 on the Polish investment market. In the first two quarters of the year, Poland’s total commercial property investment volume was 44 percent higher than in the same period last year.
“The Polish commercial real estate market entered 2022 with great momentum. Many large and low-yield transactions were closed in the first half of 2022, with more to follow till the year-end,” comments Paweł Partyka, Partner, Capital Markets, Cushman & Wakefield Polska.
Key market fundamentals are improving gradually, with industrial vacancy rates hitting all-time lows and the Warsaw office market likely to experience an undersupply in the coming 18-24 months that will put upward pressure on office rents. The rental growth prospects are already encouraging investors to increase activity, which is likely to lead to investment volume normalization.
MLP Group publishes its ESG strategy
The newly unveiled ESG strategy is a manifestation of the importance that the MLP Group Management Board attaches to sustainability. The company intends to set the highest environmental standards in the logistics and industrial property sectors. Respect for nature and care for the natural environment are the cornerstones of the activities carried out by the Group, which is developing a network of modern urban logistics parks in Poland, Germany, Austria and Romania. MLP Group has set itself a goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2026.
“In our new ESG strategy, we have included all key directions of activity and principal tasks to be completed to achieve net zero carbon emissions. We are focused on our goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2026. This is also very important for our tenants: environmental protection is often a major challenge for them, and at the same time they obtain tangible financial gains by, for example, using renewable energy,” said Tomasz Zabost, Member of the Management Board of the MLP Group S.A.
SALESmanago acquires 100 e-commerce clients in 2022
Customer engagement platform SALESmanago has acquired 100 new customers in 2022, including Toys R Us, Pharm24, Greece’s largest online pharmacy, and Wycon, Italy’s premier supplier of cosmetics.
A recent study by McKinsey found that inflation has caused more customers to switch brand loyalties since the beginning of 2022 than in all of 2020 and 2021 put together. And 90 percent of them plan to adjust their shopping behaviour yet further to the prevailing market conditions. In response, according to research by MarTech Series, more than 70 percent of e-commerce companies believe that implementing customer data management will be a key factor in retaining and developing customer loyalty.
“Today’s e-commerce businesses are faced with extremely difficult market conditions,” says Greg Blazewicz, founder and CEO of SALESmanago. “95 percent of them are concerned about the real possibility of a recession shortly while also having to cope with the additional pressures of increasingly unstable customer loyalty, new data protection regulations, and the Big Tech war over customer data.”
Scallier leases more than 6,200 sqm of retail space over the last 3 months
Pepco, KiK, Sportisimo, Penti, Elmark and Super Zoo are tenants who have signed contracts for the largest areas in retail parks developed by Scallier in Romania. In total, since the beginning of May this year, 11 new lease agreements have been signed in Timisoara, Vaslui, Turda and Mosnita retail parks.
By the end of 2022, Scallier’s portfolio will include about 40,000 sqm of commissioned, lettable retail space located in Romanian retail parks. In 2023, the company plans further openings. All retail facilities developed by the company in Romania are certified under the ecological BREEAM certification system.
“Retail parks implemented by us in Romania provide the market with a diverse, unique offer, which includes stores of recognised international brands,” said Wojciech Jurga, Managing Partner at Scallier, responsible for the company’s development in the Romanian market.
“Romania is one of the fastest growing and recovering markets in the region of Central and Eastern Europe after the pandemic slowdown. This is mainly due to the growing consumption and the growing importance of the IT sector, ” said Adrian Aleman, Development Director for the Romanian market at Scallier.
