Angelo Gordon and Marcol launch €250m German self-storage platform

The German market for self-storage companies is set to be enlarged with the arrival of a new German investment platform, Space Plus, which is a joint venture between alternative investment firm Angelo Gordon and private investment group Marcol.

The company, which will be headed by self-storage veteran Russell Jordan, will target underperforming retail and commercial assets across Germany. Targetted transaction volume is €250m. 

Jordan comes with a wealth of relevant experience, having been managing director of Self Storage Plus Germany and before that, at Fauvic European Business Partners. He joined Space Plus in January last year.

Angelo Gordon has been positioning itself for a while to be a sizeable player in the European self-storage market. It bought EasyBox Self Storage in Italy in 2018 as part of what director Marcel Hertig described as a drive to “take advantage of the rapidly expanding self-storage market in Europe and to build a platform with significant value and economies of scale”.

Space Plus has already bought five assets for conversion or redevelopment into new state-of-the-art self-storage facilities, located in Essen, Hagen, and Krefeld in North Rhine-Westphalia, with one in Osnabrück in Lower Saxony and one in Bremen. The assets had previously been used primarily to serve the retail industry. Targeting off-market deals, a further four in the pipeline have now also been secured.

According to Marcol's head of business development, Rebekah Tobias, : “This is an optimal time to launch an innovative, new self-storage platform given the increasing demand for the product across Europe. Having assembled a highly experienced team, combined with a truly disruptive business model and the robust growth forecast for the sector, Space Plus is poised to become a predominant player in one of Europe’s most undersupplied markets.”

Space Plus has mandated Frankfurt-headquartered Krieger Group to manage the properties of its growing portfolio, including capex, accounting and tax advice. Krieger already manages about €8bn of assets for its clients.