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.
