Oxford, AussieSuper And M7 Buy £300M Logistics Portfolio
A joint venture between Canadian and Australian pension funds has bought a €350M (£300M) portfolio of small and midsized logistics assets, taking their investment in the sector to £1.2B.
M7 Real Estate, the investment and asset management business jointly owned by Oxford Properties Group and AustralianSuper, bought the portfolio of 31 urban infill and mid-box logistics assets in France and the UK. The acquisition was made through their European Supply Chain Investment Partnership joint venture.
The new portfolio, which was managed by Mileway while under the ownership of funds managed by Blackstone, comprises 2.4M SF of logistics space in Manchester, Leeds, Milton Keynes, Paris and Lyon.
M7 previously managed multilet industrial assets for Blackstone, so it is likely to be buying back assets it knows very well.
ESCIP now owns and manages over 12M SF across 116 European logistics assets. This year, the venture has put about €600M into 40 assets comprising about 4.2M SF. This brings assets under management in ESCIP to €1.4B.
“This transaction demonstrates our continued conviction in the resilience and long-term growth of the European logistics sector,” Oxford Properties Vice President Alicia Peters said.
The deal means Blackstone has sold more than £1.3B of UK and European logistics assets this year. In October, it sold a £1B UK portfolio to Tritax in a deal that involved it taking a stake in the listed company.
