Accolade, which focuses on investments in industrial and logistics real estate, concluded lease agreements for nearly 460,000 square meters in the six countries where it operates in the second and third quarters of this year.
"The high hundreds of thousands of square meters of newly leased space with significant rent growth prove that even in turbulent times, other companies from the fields of industry, logistics and e-commerce are coming and expanding," said Milan Kratina, CEO of Accolade.
According to him, there are significant investments on the part of tenants in the automation of operations, which are often items in the billions of crowns. "It's the next technological revolution," he adds.
Compared to last year, in terms of the volume of newly concluded leases, this is a significant increase. During the same period last year, Accolade signed contracts for only 150,000 square meters.
"The substantial increase was due to the continued geographic expansion of the portfolio and strong interest from tenants with high demand," added Kratina, the 23rd richest Czech, according to Forbes.
Of the newly leased premises, the portfolio within the Czech Republic has grown the most, especially in the Karlovy Vary and Ústí Regions. Specifically, in the Karlovy Vary region, the largest investment to date is the industrial park near Cheb, the value of which is 4.3 billion crowns.
This was followed by Poland, where the company managed to complete its first-ever and largest Polish project in the port city of Szczecin, which was one of Accolade's first projects in the country. The third most rented country was Spain, specifically the cities of Burgos and Valencia.
Investment plan of 12 billion crowns
Accolade currently owns 26 logistics parks in Poland, which are spread across the country. The aggregate of their leasable areas amounts to approximately 1.5 million square meters out of a total of 2.6 million square meters in Accolade's portfolio, which in addition to Poland includes assets in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands.
Accolade has so far invested almost 28 billion crowns in Poland and intends to invest another 12 billion crowns in Polish assets in the future.
The group entered Poland in 2015 with the first project in the city of Szczecin, specifically in the Zalom location. The last hall was completed and handed over to the tenant Autodoc Logistic this August. With a leasable area of 230,000 square meters and more than 46 hectares occupied by the revitalized land of the former Szczecin Zalom brownfield, it is the largest park that Accolade owns in Poland. In the entire portfolio, only the site in Cheb is larger, with a leasable area of 390,000 square meters.
Accolade as an investor
The largest realized industrial parks include:
Ostrov u Stříbra - it is one of the largest tenants in the KION portfolio, which is growing together with the park.
Cheb South + Cheb - Cheb South: Part of the Park is the greenest industrial building in the world, which received the "Outstanding" level of sustainability certification and a record score of 90.68%.
Cheb was declared the best industrial zone of 2017 in Central Europe.
The largest tenants include: DHL, Tchibo (2021 the largest completed industrial building in the Czech Republic), KION, Raben, Amazon.
The number of countries in which it operates: six - the Czechia, Poland, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Slovakia, further expansion is planned.
Source: Accolade
Today, all the buildings of the Szczecin park are leased, and Autodoc Logistics, the Polish branch of an international group that is a dealer in the automotive aftermarket, is the largest tenant here.
The company has been operating at the site since its inception, currently renting three halls there with a total area exceeding 70,000 square meters. Other tenants include, for example, the multinational company DHL or the Scandinavian brands Pierce, Cotes, Change Lingerie and Svendsen Sport, which chose Szczecin as a gateway to other European markets.
Interest does not wane
Investments in industrial and logistics real estate remain attractive despite the economic slowdown, according to the company. The industrial real estate segment has experienced three years of unprecedented growth. Even as the economy slows down, the demand for halls is not abating.
“Financing real estate makes it more expensive, which puts pressure on real estate yields to rise. They used to go down and property prices went up. Now we see that the situation in the real estate market is changing. And there are two ways to respond to that - either you cut costs or you raise rents. Because it is not yet possible to reduce costs too much, so there is a lot of pressure on the growth of rents across Europe," says the head of the company and adds: "In the case of the Accolade fund portfolio, we can see that our tenants are holding up very well so far, no one is leaving and we have the vast majority of rents paid."
