Urban Logistics Wins Approval for North Melbourne Sheds

Urban Logistics Co has won planning approval for five warehouses on a 7.5-ha site about 20km north of Melbourne—its 10th asset in just two years.

Hume City Council approved the application for what will be known as the Broadmeadows Industrial Estate, which will provide about 48,800sq m of floor space.

The $64-million project will include 23 units of varying sizes, as well as onsite cafes and parking, across an L-shaped site on two parcels of land at 1-31 Riggall Street, Broadmeadows.

ULC acquired the former packaging plant from Visy Packaging Properties around March of 2020, saying the existing site was under-utilised. ULC believes it can add up to 25,000sq m to the current capacity.

The last-mile logistics specialist now counts about 45 clients across 27 separate warehouses in what has become a billion-dollar-plus portfolio.  In a deliberate strategy, ULC has targeted urban infill sites in Sydney and Melbourne.

Last week industrial sector leaders issued a stark warning to governments, saying a chronic undersupply of zoned industrial land across greater Melbourne risked serious consequences for the state’s logistics and supply chain.

▲ Broadmeadows: In a deliberate strategy ULC has targeted urban infill sites in both Sydney and Melbourne.

The warning comes after the Property Council of Australia released research—commissioned from town planners Urbis—which shows there is only four years’ supply of industrial-zoned land remaining in metropolitan Melbourne.

The Urbis research—its first into the sector since 2018—indicates the city’s south-eastern region has as little as one year’s land supply available for industrial development, and concludes that in some areas industrial development has already reached the limits of the so-called Urban Growth Boundary.

Founded in 2019, ULC is a joint venture between Wentworth Capital (formerly Alistair Nash’s private equity real estate firm NashCap) and a fund managed by the US investment giant BlackRock Alternatives.