WA Pays $51m for Waterfront Site in Perth’s South

The WA government’s land and development agency has laid out $51 million to acquire a substantial waterfront site in Perth’s southern suburbs.

Development WA has picked up the 4.63ha waterfront site at 49-53 Clarence Beach Road, Henderson for $51 million.

The site is south of Fremantle and Rockingham, one of Perth’s southernmost suburbs.

The new site currently has 12,740sq m of existing building improvements, 140m of frontage to the water, a sea-bed licence and an established slipway launch structure.

The acquisition comes after the WA government allocated $116 million to move port services from Fremantle to Kwinana in the budget last month.

The current tenant on the site is superyacht builders Echo Yachts who has just signed a contract to build a 57m sail-powered catamaran, which will be the world’s largest.

In 2021, the Federal Government announced that the Henderson shipyard precinct was a sovereign capability powerhouse with several defence projects being worked on at the site at the time.

The WA government has promised 1000 jobs will be created in the construction of a dry dock at the site with a masterplan for the precinct planned within the next few months.

It is believed the state want to earmark the site for defence-related projects.

CBRE’s Jarrad Grierson and Derek Barlow managed the sale for the previous owners through an off-market process.

“It stands out as one of the few sites capable of servicing the superyacht and ship manufacturing industry [in the region],”  Grierson said.