Charter Hall acquires 16ha site in Boronia

28 May 2021

Charter Hall has snapped up GlaxoSmithKline’s life sciences campus at Boronia in Melbourne’s east in a $106 million deal with the pharmaceutical giant.

The facility is used by GSK as its Australian manufacturing hub for high-volume respiratory products but the group will be vacating the site in 2023.

The 16ha site comprises a 33,878 sqm facility with an office, manufacturing plant and temperature controlled warehouse, occupying just 20 per cent of the land.

Charter Hall will hold the property in its $7 billion wholesale industrial and logistics fund, CPIF and will look to redevelop part of the site. The deal was struck on an initial yield of about 4 per cent.

In October last year, the global pharmaceutical giant announced it would close its Melbourne factory, it’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturing plant in the southern hemisphere. The Boronia factory focused on high volume products and Blow-Fill-Seal manufacturing, which is highly skilled and specialised work. However, the group will have less need of those capabilities in future years, as they move toward a new innovative pipeline. GSK is preparing to create two new leading companies, one a leader in biopharma, protecting life and fighting disease, with an R&D approach focused on the science of the immune system and genetics – and the other a new world-leading Consumer Healthcare company, dedicated to improving everyday health, with category-leading brands based on trusted science.

GSK will lease back the property for 2.3 years on triple net terms from settlement, with annual CPI reviews, however Charter Hall will look for ways to redevelop the large scale site which is suitable for other biomedical and life sciences uses.