Charter Hall targeting Last Mile Logistics with Auburn Buy

Charter Hall has acquired the Auburn Redyard Centre from Reading International for $90m as a potential last mile logistics site for the inner West.

The Centre occupies a large 4.82-hectare landholding at 98-100 Parramatta Road, which is just 18 kilometres from the Sydney CBD and six kilometres from the Parramatta CBD. The existing property contains a 10 screen Reading Cinema and 15 large format retail tenants together with a 1.35 ha vacant land parcel. The site also includes a 1,564 sqm telephone exchange facility, leased to Telstra until 2022 with a 1-year option. The combined offering boasts a dominant frontage of over 450 metres to Parramatta Road’s renowned business and retail district.

Charter Hall will initially seek to develop logistics facilities on the 1.35ha vacant site whilst working with existing tenants to consider opportunities to reconfigure the balance of the site time to achieve a higher and better use from the site. Auburn sits close to the centre of Sydney with some 600,000 residents living within 10 minutes of the site.

The asset was acquired by Charter Halls Prime Industrial Fund (CPIF). Fund Manager, Richard Mason said The site represents one of the few opportunities of scale in the tightly held inner-west Sydney market, where demand is elevated, vacancy rates are at historical lows and prospects for rental growth are considered strong due to the land constrained nature of the precinct”

”The completion of the M4/M5 Link Tunnels in 2023 will reduce travel times to the airport and enable the site to facilitate last mile logistics.”

Last week the Fund secured the leasehold interest in 35 hectares of master planned approved industrial land known as the Light Horse Business Hub in Eastern Creek, NSW. The estate has an approved total Gross Lettable Area of approximately 170,000sqm.

CPIF’s $7 billion portfolio is one of Australia’s largest industrial and logistics portfolios comprising a geographically diverse, high quality portfolio of industrial and logistics assets.