Smethwick industrial park changes hands in £25m deal
Danish pension fund-backed Vengrove has bought into Rabone Park as part of a deal for two industrial and logistics parks in the West Midlands and North West.
The firm says growing demand for mid box in the West Midlands is behind the investment, which is worth £24.65m and also includes Stone Cross Park in Warrington.
UNits 2 and 6 at Rabone Park are sized at around 68,000 sq ft over two units, while the firm’s investment at Stone Cross Park totals 129,000 sq ft across three self-contained units. Both sites are fully let.
Vengrove says the assets were acquired from an institutional vendor for VRE Evergreen Logistics, the Danish-backed vehicle through which it manages its light industrial and logistics assets across the UK, Germany and France.
The firm says it will now carry out sustainability upgrades in line with the company’s ESG targets, a plan it says will turn “well-located stock into the stabilised, institutional-grade product the market is short of.”
Will Hunting, partner and head of European acquisitions at Vengrove, said: “These assets build critical mass in two of our target UK markets and offer the combination of defensive income from good-quality real estate and credit, alongside clear asset management upside we can capture through our own teams.
“Ownership across the sector has consolidated to the point where there are now very few genuinely independent pan-European managers left, and that scarcity allows our strengths to shine. Vengrove is nimble enough to move quickly, with the institutional backing and governance that capital partners increasingly expect. We are putting that to work across all of our core European markets.”
Vengrove was advised by Index RE, Simmons & Simmons, Air Building Consultancy and Nova Ambiente.
The vendor was advised by Kimmre and CMS.
