Charter Hall Pays $43m for Australia TradeCoast Site

Charter Hall has splashed $43 million on an 8.4ha site at Pinkenba in the Australia TradeCoast industrial precinct.

It is the second foray into the prime industrial and logistics precinct, where it also owns 200 Holt Street near the Brisbane Airport.

The land at 57 Culya Street was purchased from United Petroleum, which had held the site since acquiring it for $13.75 million in 2014, and a 50,000sq m logistics estate will be developed on the greenfield site.

Charter Hall Group recently announced it had settled a $560-million, off-market acquisition of 17 assets within prime industrial precincts on the eastern seaboard, which follows a $2.7-billion spend on industrial and logistics assets in the 2020-21 financial year.

Charter Hall Industrial and Logistics chief executive Richard Stacker said there was a strong focus on high-quality industrial assets in prime locations.

“The breadth and diversity of our fund capital provides the capacity to act quickly and execute in line with vendor expectations,” Stacker said.

“With a further $3 billion of investment capacity together with a captive development pipeline, we would expect our $16-billion industrial portfolio to grow beyond $20 billion over coming years.”

The diminishing land supply on the Australia TradeCoast is pushing prices up with Charter Hall paying a record $511 per sq m for the Culya Street property.

It follows the success of the logistics estate at 200 Holt Street with tenants including Amazon, DHL and Australia Post.

The Australia TradeCoast has been highlighted as a key industrial area under the Brisbane City Council’s draft Industrial Strategy, which is currently out for consultation.

The council has forecast the Australia TradeCoast and the South West Industrial Gateway, which make up 87 per cent of the city’s industrial land, would provide almost half of the city’s employment opportunities outside the CBD by 2041.

The draft strategy is aimed at protecting industrial precincts and unlocking potential for mixed-use industrial development within a 5km radius of Brisbane’s CBD.