Cadence, PGIM Team Up for $145m Freight Rail Acquisition

A partnership has been struck between PGIM Real Estate and Cadence Property Group to acquire a key infrastructure asset in Western Sydney. 

PGIM and Cadence partnered up to buy St Marys Intermodal Terminal at 2 Forrester Road, St Marys, from Pacific National for $145 million. 

The 157,669sq m site has a gross lettable area of 95,940sq m, a 1.5km rail spur and a planned 20,000sq m hardstand expansion. 

It also has direct freight rail access to Port Botany and is on 10ha of a 43ha site.

An estimated 300,000 shipping containers will be transported by rail between Port Botany and St Marys each year.

The acquisition comes with a 20-year lease agreement with current tenant ACFS Port Logistics. 

Cadence has focused on infrastructure-aligned industrial assets over the past two years with St Marys its fourth low site coverage acquisition. 

Construction on the hardstand expansion will start soon as part of the lease agreement with ACFS.

▲ McMahon Services at work on the first stage of the St Marys Intermodal Terminal.

PGIM head of Australia Steve Bulloch said the investment was part of PGIM’s Asia Core strategy.

“The opportunity to acquire a unique asset like this, with strong real estate and infrastructure characteristics, was attractive to us and the ability to substantially derisk it by having a long-term tenant in place prior to acquisition added to the appeal,” Bulloch said. 

“PGIM Real Estate has been very active this year across a range of real estate asset classes, but we have also been very selective in pursuing strategies with a strong underlying thematic and assets that will be well positioned for the heightened market volatility in the near term.”

CBRE’s Jason Edge, Cameron Grier and John Micallef acted on behalf of Pacific National. 

Application documents for planning approval from 2019 show an estimated cost of $33.2 million to build St Marys Intermodal Terminal.