Frasers Breaks Ground on $1bn Sydney Industrial Precinct

Frasers Property Industrial, alongside Sydney fund manager Altis Property Partners, has broken ground on a logistics estate in western Sydney with an end value of more than $1 billion.

The site, which occupies 649-763 Mamre Road in Kemps Creek, south-east of Penrith, lies within the rezoned Mamre Road Precinct which is set to become an 850 hectares warehousing industrial hub as part of the Western Sydney Employment Area.

The Mamre Road precinct is 10 key precincts in the emerging 11,200ha Western Sydney Aerotropolis, which was fast-tracked and rezoned midway through 2020 in a bid to bolster employment as the pandemic gripped the nation.

The Frasers-Altis industrial park is an amalgamation of a number of separate land parcels acquired from private owners, some as far back as 2017.

The logistics park, known as The Yards, is one of Sydney’s largest industrial developments, spanning 70 hectares.

Frasers Property Industrial, which comes under the umbrella of Singapore-listed real estate development giant Frasers Property Limited, owns and manages industrial and logistics properties in Australia and Europe.

The developer, which currently holds upwards of $8.5 billion of assets under management, will now construct a 400,000sq m of state-of-the-art, sustainably led logistics facilities across its western Sydney super site.

“[The Yards] will play a vital role in fulfilling both the growing demand for warehousing and logistics space in the region and consumer demand, which we’ve seen accelerate further since the start of the global Covid-19 pandemic,” Frasers Property Industrial chief executive Reini Otter said.

“[The industrial estate] will be the first Australian industrial community where sustainability, wellbeing and technology are at the heart of the precinct, while also contributing to the region’s economic growth and job creation during a crucial time.”

For Altis, the partnership with Frasers will give it a third project in Kemps Creek.

The private equity-backed group manages more than 30 properties worth more than $3 billion on behalf of pension funds, institutional and high-net-worth investors.

Western Sydney industrial land values have skyrocketed amid strong demand for zoned land from developers looking to deploy funds into new projects amid a global boom in logistics driven by e-commerce growth.

Listed developer Mirvac is also pressing ahead with plans for a 56ha industrial estate in the Mamre Road Precinct to be known as Aspect Industrial.

Groups such as Boyuan and Scentre are also working on a 344ha masterplanned health, retail and logistics projects within the “Northern Gateway development”.

Practical completion of stage one of the Frasers-Altis industrial is scheduled for early 2022.

Earlier this month, Frasers secured the lease for a 15,580sq m speculative warehouse in its 41.3-ha Rubix Connect industrial estate in Melbourne’s Dandenong South to efm Logistics.

Efm, the largest fourth-party logistics (4PL) provider in Australia and New Zealand, will now centralise its Melbourne operations from two existing facilities in Dandenong South into the new warehouse, which is due to be completed in June.