North West assets in £165m portfolio purchase

M&G Real Estate has acquired multi-let holdings in Altrincham, Haydock and Aintree as part of a nine-estate, 1.5m sq ft deal with Patrizia.

The regional properties changing hands are the Hanover Road Industrial Estate in Altrincham, Haydock Industrial Estate and Liver Industrial Estate in Aintree, north Liverpool.

Like the other six assets in the deal, they are all multi-let industrial holdings.

Patrizia let a 62,000 sq ft new-build unit within the Haydock estate to Pyryoguard in summer 2021, with B8RE, CBRE and Davies Harrison advising.

The portfolio deal reflects M&G’s continued strategic plan to access small unit industrial and ‘last mile’ logistics property in scale. Each of these assets now become part of M&G’s Project King platform – a partnership with specialist asset management operator M7.

A portfolio of 40 units was strategically purchased in 2013 to access the small unit industrial and ‘last mile’ logistics sector in response to the rapid expansion of online retailing. It is let to more than 500 tenants in England, Scotland and Wales and following the Patrizia transaction, now has more than £450m in assets under management.

The portfolio has also proven its resilience with more than 98% of rent collected during the course of the pandemic.

Peter Riley, head of capital solutions and UK commercial at M&G Real Estate, said: “This significant transaction complements our vision to expand the Project King portfolio and enhances our exposure to a sector which is characterised by resilience and outperformance and is ideally positioned to benefit from existing and future structural and macro-economic trends.

“The fundamentals of the occupier market remain very positive, which should lead to continued rental growth and the sustainable, long-term returns that our client seeks.”

Jamie Younger, director UK&IE transactions at Patrizia, added: “This deal represents the culmination of a successful six-year strategy to build a portfolio of multi-let industrial properties in solid locations across the UK, with significant value-add potential.

“We were one of the earliest institutions to identify the opportunity to buy into the urban logistics growth story back in 2014, working with specialist operator Caisson.”

M&G Real Estate’s total exposure to the industrial and logistics sector in the UK is £3.25bn across 19.4m sq ft.