Hunt for occupier for North’s largest spec shed stepped up

Mirastar’s 550,000 sq ft XDock in Widnes is the largest single investment in Liverpool City Region’s freeport to date. In the face of market uncertainty, the public and private sectors are grappling with how to maximise the potential of the fledgling initiative.

Investment in Liverpool City Region’s freeport has topped £200m since 2023 and Mirastar’s monster XDock in Widnes accounts for £65m of that.

It ticks pretty much every box a modern industrial unit could hope to.

It is a beast of a shed, the largest currently in the North, according to the developer, and big enough to fit 183m tins of baked beans, according to ChatGPT.

XDock boasts huge yards and cross-dock loading capabilities, allowing for goods to be delivered and dispatched quickly to and from the nearby motorway and rail networks, and, perhaps most importantly, the Port of Liverpool.

The site also has a 2.5MW power supply and a request is out for another 1.5MW, which would significantly increase its attractiveness to certain occupiers.

The facility has been designed to be net carbon zero ready operation, owing in part to a roof mounted 1,000 kpw solar array installation.

Above all, its location within the freeport means that an end user could save up to £15m in tax and business rates, based on Mirastar’s estimates.

Such glowing credentials mean it has attracted significant interest from potential occupiers but is yet to be snapped up since completing in April.

Unsurprisingly, this is a source of frustration to those connected to the project.

General market uncertainty caused by macro-economic headwinds and the unsettling prospect of a budget at the end of November, mean that potential occupiers are reticent to pull the trigger on large deals at present.

Steve Rotheram visited XDock last week. Credit: Shedshooters

“If the government gives the market the confidence, I’m absolutely certain that you’ll see this whole place filled with people,” said Liverpool City Region Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram on a recent visit to XDock.

“That’s what we want. We want the freeport to be successful, not just for the city region, but for UK PLC.”

If media reports and murmurings from Whitehall are to be believed, chancellor Rachel Reeves’ budget is unlikely to do the trick as far as reassuring the market.

Rotheram recognises the scale of Reeves’ challenge.

“I would never, ever want [to be chancellor]. Not for a big clock,” he said.

“But Rachel’s job is to give those signals, isn’t it? It’s her opportunity to show that we will get economic growth, because economic growth will provide that stability for the market.”

Rotheram’s solution to unlocking growth is, perhaps unsurprisingly, more devolution.

“[Growth] is all dependent for me about how [Reeves] uses the delivery arm of devolution and Metro Mayors to get some of that growth. We can stimulate it, I think, much more quickly.”

Despite the national economic landscape, Liverpool City Region is “bucking the national trend in attracting really high value and high skilled opportunities”, according to Rotheram.

It is for this reason, as well as the aforementioned credentials of Mirastar’s XDock, that encourages everyone connected with the project that it is only a matter of time before an occupier signs on the dotted line.

However, they are all in agreement that the city region’s freeport status is not cutting through as much as it might and that more needs to be done to get people excited about it.

The £200m of committed investment in Liverpool City Region’s freeport is significantly lower than then £1.2bn pledged within Hull’s freeport so far.

“It’s really important that we all join together and start to see the benefits of attracting companies into the city region to set up in first-rate facilities like this,” Rotheram said.

Giles Jones, freeport project manager at the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, is working on it.

“[The freeport] is something that’s not necessarily too easy to understand, and we’ve got a real role there to articulate that,” he said.

The benefits of occupation within the freeport are tangible – tax breaks and easements to name two – and they also serve to “de-risk” investments from the likes of Mirastar, Jones said.

The unit is the largest available in the North. Credit: Shedshooters

Robert Brophy, head of asset management at Mirastar, said the site’s location within the freeport was a “deciding factor” in acquiring it in 2024.

Mirastar and appointed agents Cushman & Wakefield and Savills are now making a concerted push to justify that investment by securing an occupier.

Brophy wants to work more closely with Rotheram and the combined authority to generate a buzz around the freeport.

“It is about raising awareness to the massive opportunity there is here, and flying the flag for the freeport,” he said.

Rotheram is clear that there is a need for “coherence” around attracting occupiers across the whole of the city region’s innovation zone – the freeport and life sciences investment zone.

For Brophy and XDock, this would look like going out to firms that need to be located close to distribution hubs like the Widnes intermodal terminal and the Port of Liverpool.

Mirastar likes the Liverpool City Region and wider North West for its strong demand dynamics and constrained supply.

The firm has invested £500m in new-build and existing assets in the region in recent years.

That investors have the confidence to inject sizeable amounts of cash delivering speculative industrial space is an indication of the area’s attractiveness and gives confidence to the mayor that the c.1,400 jobs XDock could accommodate will become a reality.

“I’m saying it will be a success,” Rotheram said. “Nobody puts £60m into something if they think it’s going to fail.

“These are businesses who want to make profit, and I think they’ve come to the right place in the Liverpool City Region.”