Global investment manager Barings has secured €650M in commitments from investors for its whole loan real estate strategy, and it plans to continue a recent Irish lending push.

The new fund includes €300M of backing from a Nordic pension and insurance client and will see the management firm invest in unlevered whole loans secured by core-plus and value-add European real estate.

Last year Barings agreed 14 loans worth more than €1.1B ($1.2B) across its different debt strategies in Europe and APAC, nearly doubling its loan commitments to more than €3.4B in assets under management.

The investment manager is an active lender in the Irish market. In January the firm entered the Irish logistics market with a €225M loan deal to KKR and Palm Capital.

One part of that deal, a five-year agreement worth €188.5M of senior secured finance, helped acquire a portfolio of 73 properties in Greater Dublin and the Naas Enterprise Business Park. The portfolio was 97% let at the time of the deal. A further €36.7M was lent to the duo of firms to fund the acquisition of six last-mile light industrial properties in Dublin.

The loan had an initial three-year term as well as one two-year extension option. The loan was secured against the portfolio, which consisted of 345K SF of industrial space that was 95% let.

The new real estate loan strategy will see Barings return to logistics, which across Europe is the manager’s preferred investment market, as well as see it lend against resi, office and BTR sites in Ireland, the UK, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and the Nordic countries.

“Over the past three years, our real estate debt platform has experienced sustained growth as we increase our exposure across the European continent and into APAC,” Barings Head of Europe and Asia Pacific Real Estate Debt Sam Mellor said.

The firm’s interest in Ireland comes as logistics becomes one of the country’s top investment prospects.

The latest data from Savills Ireland published earlier in July found that the dearth of small deals in the logistics sector had continued, with the average size of logistics leasing transactions rising to 33.7K SF, 7% higher than the five-year average.