Iput Launches €230M Fund To Develop Nexus Logistics Park
Iput Real Estate has launched the €230M Iput Nexus Logistics Fund to develop the first 1.5M SF of Nexus Logistics Park near Dublin Airport.
Iput has raised €115M in new capital from two new investors, the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund and a European institutional investor via CBRE Investment Management’s Indirect Private Real Estate Strategies, to develop the first phase of Nexus. The remaining €115M is being invested by Iput through a combination of capital and its zoned logistics land bank.
Iput said that it intends to “capitalise on the absence of meaningful large-scale institutional investment in Irish logistics parks, and the pent-up demand from major global and domestic occupiers looking to establish modern distribution hubs, particularly in the Dublin region.”
Nexus Logistics Park is located at the Cherryhound Interchange off the M2 motorway, adjacent to Dublin’s M50 and near Dublin Airport. The entire development will span 2.5M SF across 17 buildings, while the first phase will comprise 1.5M SF across nine units ranging from 53K SF to 460K SF.
The development will also include an outdoor multi-use games area, a public pavilion, a café and retail space.
Construction is set to start this month on two speculative units of 112K SF and 53K SF. The remaining seven units are scheduled for completion over the next five years. Iput has full planning permission for an additional 1M SF, which will bring the total size of the development to 2.5M SF. Iput has appointed CBRE and Harvey as leasing agents on Phase 1.
“Nexus offers a compelling investment opportunity given the significant and sustained demand for logistics in Ireland, particularly in Dublin,” Iput Real Estate CEO Niall Gaffney said in a statement.
Takeup across the Dublin industrial and logistics market reached 745K SF in the fourth quarter, bringing the total for 2024 to 1.3M SF, according to the latest report from Savills Ireland, marking a 58% decline compared with 2023.
There were just 31 deals across the year, resulting in an average deal size of 42,700 SF. However, Savills said this was distorted by a single transaction of 290K SF, with the fall driven by a decline in the transactions of big-box units of 50K SF or more. The number of big-box deals declined by 71% in 2024, representing a decrease of 1.5M SF compared with 2023.
The largest deal of the year occurred in Q4 with the preconstruction purchase of 290K SF at Drake House in Dublin Airport Logistics Park, followed by the letting of 104K SF at Belgard House to Chemist Warehouse and the 97K SF letting of Building 1 in the M50 Logistics Hub to Jysk.
Overall, the vacancy rate stood at 1.8% at the end of the year, up slightly from 1.7% at the end of 2023, driven by existing stock becoming vacant rather than new supply. However, 235K SF of vacant space was made available through sublet or assignment.
The lack of transactions in prime industrial and logistics units has resulted in stagnation in prime rents, which remained unchanged over the course of 2024 at €13 per SF. But with 1.7M SF scheduled to complete this year, Savills predicted that prime rents will rise to €14 per SF during 2025.
