Slate makes further €72m investment in German grocery-anchored retail

The Toronto-based Slate Asset Management has invested €72m to buy grocery-anchored and ‘essential-use’ properties in Germany for its first pure Europe-focused fund.

The alternative asset manager said the two portfolios were acquired in separate deals by Slate European Real Estate Fund III, a grocery real estate fund which raised €250m in March from European, Asian and North American investors.  Slate Europe III is also the first of Slate’s vehicles to include European investors, who contributed 56% of the capital, or €140m. A further 14% came from Asian investors. Slate’s previous real estate investment vehicles had only partial allocations to Europe.

The portfolios comprise 60,000sqm across Germany and are currently leased to grocery and other essential-use tenants. Big tenants include discount grocer Lidl and Aldi.

Brady Welch, one of Slate’s founding partners who recently moved to London to overlook the fund, described the portfolios as defensive real estate, acquired ‘at a discount’: “Both portfolios have performed well throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, providing essential goods and services to consumers on a daily basis even throughout lockdown periods.

“We continue to see attractive opportunities focused on grocery and essential-use real estate across Europe and look forward to deploying further capital across the continent.” 

Slate describes itself as a ‘value-oriented’ manager with $6.5bn of assets under management. It has European offices in London, Frankfurt, Dublin and Luxembourg . Since December 2016, the company has completed 258 acquisitions of food stores and ‘essential’ properties in Europe with more than 490,000 sqm of gross lettable space.