Tristan and Curzon buy €60m German/Austrian logistics portfolio
Pan-European investment manager Tristan Capital's core plus-style CCP IV Fund (Curzon Capital Partners IV) has bought four logistics warehouses in Austria and Germany, paying almost €60m in two separate transactions. The three Austrian assets were bought from Aviva and the German asset from AXA Investment Managers.
Tristan Capital bought two properties at Vienna airport and one near the Graz cargo airport, as well as one property close to Munich airport. The three Austrian warehouses were purchased for more than €40m and have a combined gross lettable area of about 49,000 sqm. Tenants at the two Vienna properties include Vienna Airport, Swissport and TNT.
The 13,000 sqm. German logistics asset, located in Garching near Munich airport, was bought for about €16m. Its tenants include grocer Edeka and Kraftverkehr Nagel.
According to Tristan Capital's Managing Director Ali Otmar, “Logistics is currently one of the most attractive real estate sectors for investment in Europe, as strong demand continues to be driven by the e-commerce revolution and underlying economic recovery. All of these assets are located close to key airport hubs in their local markets, where rising freight traffic and a shortage of development land in these locations support future rental growth.”
He added: “These strong fundamentals will underpin our investments for the foreseeable future as we structure them for the institutional market through active asset management.”
CCP IV teamed up with the Cologne-based Alpha Industrial for the four acquisitions, which is advising on asset management on the ground as well as tenant relationships and executing the repositioning strategy. As in several prior investments in Germany by funds advised by Tristan Capital, Alpha will also act as significant co-investor.
Investment management boutique Tristan Capital Partners specialises in real estate investment strategies across the UK and continental Europe. Its pan-European real estate funds include core-plus and value-added/opportunistic strategies. The firm has more than €7bn of assets under management.
The logistics market in Germany is still booming, with transactions in Germany doubling to €910m year-on-year in the first quarter. At a recent press briefing in Frankfurt, Peter Kunz, the head of industrial and logistics in Germany for broker group Colliers International described the sector as "the new retail". Online shopping and the rise of retailers' new omni-channel distribution strategies meant that retailing and logistics were seeing increasing areas of overlap.
German investors have been particularly active in logistics, accounting for 79% of total deal volume in the first quarter. Kunz said he expects the share of international investors to rise as the year progresses, as more portfolio transactions are likely to hit the market. Gross prime yields fell by 50bp to 5.9%, ranging from 5.4% in Munich to up to 6% in Cologne.