Charter Hall continues to strengthen its convenience retail portfolio with $200 million in acquisitions

Charter Hall Group (Charter Hall or the Group) has continued to grow its leading convenience retail portfolio with $200 million of selective acquisitions over the last four months.

Its most recent acquisition was the Corio Village Shopping Centre in Corio, purchased for $146 million from syndicator IPG.

The 33,600sqm shopping centre, on the fringe of metropolitan Melbourne, is anchored by Coles and Woolworths supermarkets, together with Kmart, six mini-majors and 68 convenience specialty stores.

Charter Hall Retail CEO, Ben Ellis, said, “As the largest owner of convenience retail in Australia, with a portfolio of $14 billion, Charter Hall continues to selectively curate portfolio strategies for its managed funds.

“The Corio acquisition continues the successful growth of our convenience partnership acquisitions. We pursued Corio for its anchor supermarket convenience attributes, which reflected a 7% cap rate. Combined with forecast income growth, it’s expected to deliver accretive returns for the partnership.”

Charter Hall Managing Director & CEO, David Harrison, further commented, “We have always had high conviction on convenience retail, and see it continuing to outperform discretionary retail larger malls. We expect convenience retail to deliver leading total returns across all sectors within Australia.

“We know these catchments well, having also acquired Leopold south of Geelong, along with the very successful development of a Woolworths, Bunnings and Officeworks anchored shopping centre at North Altona in the southwest of Melbourne metropolitan area.

“The fact that most convenience centres can be acquired at deep discounts to replacement cost is a core value metric we focus on within our selective acquisition program.”

The Corio transaction was secured off market by the Charter Hall transactions team, negotiated via the vendors agent JLL.