This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
CHARTER Hall has secured long-term pre-lease commitments from major supermarket Coles for two new facilities in Sydney and Melbourne that will be used as high-tech customer fulfilment centres for its online business.
Scheduled to be completed in 2022, the facilities cover a combined lettable area of 60,000 sqm.
Customer demand for online food and grocery shopping has been growing for some time, and is expected to have been fast tracked further by the social distancing requirements introduced in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Melbourne facility comprises about 30,000 sqm is located within the Charter Hall Prime Industrial Fund (CPIF)-owned Midwest Logistics Hub, a 58 hectare estate on Dohertys Rd in the western suburb of Truganina.
Charter Hall already has under construction a 44,000 sqm facility pre-leased to Toll for their Mars Group contract at estate, and the recently announced 46,000 sqm facility pre-leased to Uniqlo.
At Horsley Dr in Sydney’s western suburb of Wetherill Park, the Coles facility of circa 30,000 sqm will anchor a 14 hectare estate being developed by Charter Hall, and which is owned and funded by CPIF.
The deals increase CPIF’s committed, pre-leased development pipeline to circa $900 million, and take the weighted average lease expiry of its entire $5 billion portfolio to 11 years.
“The on-going growth of e-commerce and the focus on supply-chain efficiencies continues to drive the demand for well located, high quality logistics facilities,” Charter Hall managing director and group chief executive officer, David Harrison, said.
“Charter Hall has demonstrated, via expanding our relationship with Coles, that our industrial estates located near major transport infrastructure continue to be well sought after by our major retail and logistics customers.”
Coles chief property officer, Thinus Keeve, said the new customer fulfilment centres would enable Coles Online to offer greater range and availability, from locations that allow us to deliver to customers across metropolitan Sydney and Melbourne.
Charter Hall industrial & logistics chief executive officer, Richard Stacker said the projects on completion would contribute to the Group’s $1 billion industrial and logistics development pipeline, and lifting industrial and logistics funds under management beyond $10 billion.
“Our cross-sector relationships continue to provide a point of differentiation for Charter Hall in delivering solutions for our major customers.” Stacker said.
