Panattoni, Europe’s largest developer and deployer of institutional capital in the industrial and logistics real estate sector, has completed the €160 million sale of a portfolio of five fully-let logistics parks in Poland covering a total of 230,000 sqm GLA, to a North American real estate investment manager buyer.
Three of the logistics parks are located in Warsaw; one close to the city’s airport and two in the west of the Polish capital. A fourth is situated in Poznan East, strategically located between Warsaw and Berlin on the A2 highway, and another is near the city of Radom in central Poland, 100 km to the south of Warsaw.
Robert Dobrzycki, Panattoni CEO & Co-Owner Europe, said: “Panattoni has completed the sale of these five fully-let logistics parks in Poland to a major global real estate investment manager after their development completion on schedule and to budget. Although the economic outlook is not so shiny anymore, industrial is still one of the real estate asset classes continuing to attract strong interest from investors. The recent sharp rise in construction costs and the inflation indexation of rents make standing income-producing properties a very attractive proposition for investors because they can invest in fully-let real estate at below replacement cost.”
Panattoni remains very confident in the long-term prospects for Poland’s industrial and logistics real estate market. “There are many reasons to be upbeat including the continuing strong trend towards ‘nearshoring’ following the disruptions to global supply chains, the low penetration of e-commerce relative to Western European markets and the ongoing appetite of international companies to set up manufacturing facilities here due to Poland’s low-cost, skilled labour force and large domestic market,” Robert Dobrzycki added.
The value of completed warehouse investment transactions in Poland in the first quarter of 2022 stood at €1.7 billion. While lower than the previous three-month period, this was the third-highest start to a year since 2016, according to research from agent CBRE. Although the war in neighbouring Ukraine and rising inflation have unsettled investors, demand from occupiers remains robust, and the dip in deal volumes since the end of last year was more the result of the lack of appropriate products than a waning interest in industrial and logistics assets. CBRE also predicted that the average Polish industrial and logistics transaction yield of 4.35 percent at the end of the first quarter would remain stable in the coming months, buoyed by the market’s resilient underlying fundamentals.
