Charter Hall Core Plus Industrial Fund acquires  two Sydney sites along logistics corridor

Charter Hall Group (ASX:CHC) (Charter Hall or the Group) today announced that its Core Plus Industrial Fund(CPIF) has acquired two strategic sites in Prestons, NSW, in two separate transactions.

The first property located at 290 Kurrajong Road, Prestons, is being purchased for $40 million as a  land bank for industrial pre leased investments and is strategically located at the junction of the M7 and M5 motorways. The site comprises 15 hectares of generally level and cleared industrial zoned land with development potential to provide over 70,000sqm or more than $100 million of modern logistics  facilities to capture strong tenant demand that exists for space within prime Sydney industrial precincts. A customer pre commitment has already been secured subject to a Heads of Agreement representing 25% of the site area.

Additionally, CPIF has secured a 15 year pre leased sale and leaseback investment by buying a prime industrial site from Automotive Holdings Group (AHG). The site acquisition of 402 Hoxton Park Road, Prestons for $13,755,000 has an upon completion forecast development cost of approximately $43 million, which reflects an initial yield of 6.30%. The land is to be developed into the AHG East Coast head office and distribution facility, which will be completed in mid-2016 and comprise office and warehouse accommodation of approximately 17,200sqm on a 4.43ha site providing additional expansion space of up to 9,000sqm.

CPIF Fund Manager Paul Ford commented that both properties satisfy the CPIF investment strategy of long leased modern industrial facilities in land constrained areas:

“With these acquisitions we have materially increased the Prime Sydney weighting of CPIF in line with improving fundamentals and also extended the Group’s industrial platform beyond $3 billion".

CPIF is a $1.25 billion wholesale fund with prime industrial facilities in all major Australian cities and has a development pipeline across the eastern seaboard that has the capacity to deliver in excess of $350 million of logistics facilities.