Greenman Investments secures €95m Edeka portfolio
Dublin-based Greenman Investments, as part of its continued expansion in the German asset management sector, has concluded negotiations with Germany’s largest food retailer Edeka in a sale-and-leaseback deal worth €95m. Edeka has a 26% share of the German grocery market.
The Irish investment group has acquired a portfolio of three retail parks and 26 supermarkets, primarily in the Lower Saxony, Saxony and Berlin region, bringing Greenman’s assets under management to more than €270m. The stores have a gross lettable area of about 77.000 sqm, with Edeka either the sole or the majority tenant in the supermarket or centres involved, with an average remaining lease term of 15 years. The initial yield is 7%.
The properties include three large “Fachmarktzentren” – small to medium-sized retail parks – with store space of 9,000 sqm or more, which are rented exclusively to Edeka and account for around 41% of the portfolio’s annual rental yields. Greenman is planning to carry out extensive refurbishments and expand existing store space in five smaller centres with a total store space of between 1,000 and 3,000 sqm.
John Wilkinson, the CEO of Greenman, commented that his group was in acquisition mode, and planned to double its holding of German retail assets to €500m “by this time next year”. Edeka has 11,000 stores in German and sales of nearly €50bn, and Wilkinson said Greenman planned to buy a further portfolio of Edeka stores on a sale-and-leaseback deal by the end of October.
For the Edeka acquisition, Greenman used a vehicle it has set up within its Luxembourg-registered special fund, in partnership with Frankfurt-based WCM Beteiligungs- und Grundbesitz, with the German company having an option to purchase a majority of the joint venture, known as the Income ONE fund. Greenman will handle the management of the properties in the joint venture.
Separately, Greenman operates four funds that invest in German retail properties, with its most recent acquisition being a €19m retail development in Stralsund on the Baltic coast. A further €22m deal for an asset in Dortmund is close to being concluded, Wilkinson indicated.