Despite Covid-19, investors have continued to pile into European urban logistics, spending €3.7bn between January and May 2020, a growth of 7% year on year (yoy), according to RCA data analysed by Savills. During the same period, the proportion of cross-border investment has increased from 57% to 65% yoy, despite travel restrictions being in place for many European countries for several weeks.
Recent deals include Hines acquiring a 62,000m² Urban Logistics Distribution Centre in Utrecht, the Netherlands, on behalf of the Hines Pan-European Core Fund (HECF) and Realterm Logistics debuting in Spain with a Barcelona warehouse acquisition.
Marcus de Minckwitz, Director, Omnichannel Group, Savills Regional Investment Advisory EMEA, said: “The logistics sector in general and urban logistics, in particular, is going from strength to strength. Given the positive fundamentals and the rise of e-commerce across Europe driving demand, domestic and international investors are continuing to compete over product, resulting in lowering yields in almost all European countries we monitor.”
Mike Barnes, Associate European Research, Savills, added: “In recent years, urban logistics centres have gone from servicing business to business to now also servicing business to consumer. E-commerce continues to be the main driver behind this and we have observed unprecedented levels of online retail sales growth while large parts of Europe were under lockdown. We expect this will intensify occupier demand throughout the remainder of 2020 and apply further upward pressure on rents.
