Hines Global Income Trust Acquires Logistics Asset in Wakefield from AEW UK Core Property Fund

Lon­don, 6 July 2020 – Hines, the inter­na­tion­al real estate firm, and AEW UK Invest­ment Man­age­ment are pleased to announce that Hines Glob­al Income Trust, Inc. (“Hines Glob­al”) has acquired a UK logis­tics asset at Wake­field 41 Indus­tri­al Park from AEW UK Core Prop­er­ty Fund (“AEW Core”) for £20.635 mil­lion, adding to its grow­ing Euro­pean logis­tics portfolio.

Locat­ed in Wake­field, West York­shire, the 207,115-square-foot facil­i­ty is occu­pied by ware­hous­ing and logis­tics oper­a­tor Inte­grat­ed Third Par­ty Logis­tics Ltd (ITPL) pur­suant to a lease with ten years remain­ing. The prop­er­ty pro­vides ware­hous­ing ser­vices for Coca-Cola’s largest Euro­pean man­u­fac­tur­ing plant, which is adja­cent to the asset.

The trans­ac­tion deep­ens Hines Global’s foothold in Euro­pean logis­tics, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the UK. ​“We are pleased for this oppor­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther expand Hines Global’s UK logis­tics pres­ence and enhance our exist­ing port­fo­lio of diver­si­fied glob­al prop­er­ties,” said Omar Thowfeek, Hines Man­ag­ing Direc­tor – Invest­ment Management.

The asset was acquired by AEW Core in Sep­tem­ber 2013. AEW enact­ed an exten­sive busi­ness plan of asset man­age­ment in order to max­imise val­ue from the site. This includ­ed acquir­ing the free­hold, dis­pos­ing of the adjoin­ing office build­ing, and secur­ing plan­ning per­mis­sion to dou­ble the size of the ware­house unit to c.200,000 square feet.

Com­ment­ing on the sale, Michael Shears, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor at AEW UK said, ​“Since acqui­si­tion in 2013, AEW has under­tak­en a proac­tive and thor­ough pro­gramme of asset man­age­ment and build­ing improve­ment cul­mi­nat­ing in the com­ple­tion of the refur­bished and extend­ed logis­tics unit, under-bud­get, to an indus­try high standard.”

Greg Coop­er, Hines UK Direc­tor of indus­tri­al and logis­tics, said: ​“The site is a key loca­tion for the occu­pant and has recent­ly dou­bled in size fol­low­ing a peri­od of con­sid­er­able growth. This lat­est trans­ac­tion builds on our strat­e­gy to acquire logis­tics assets that are sit­u­at­ed in key dis­tri­b­u­tion nodes and pro­vide crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture to tenants.”

Hines has been invest­ing and devel­op­ing in the logis­tics sec­tor since 1957 with a glob­al track record of 310 logis­tics projects in 11 coun­tries. Glob­al­ly, the firm has acquired 34.2 mil­lion square feet of space and devel­oped 41.5 mil­lion square feet (with 3.9 mil­lion square feet of projects cur­rent­ly in design or under devel­op­ment) in the sector.

Pre­vi­ous UK logis­tics acqui­si­tions for Hines Glob­al include a 137,000-square-foot asset in Mil­ton Keynes, a 270,000-square-foot dis­tri­b­u­tion facil­i­ty in Bris­tol, and a 216,000-square-foot ware­house in Edinburgh.

Mark Wil­son, Direc­tor in the invest­ment team at Sav­ills, says: ​“We are delight­ed to have act­ed for AEW UK on the dis­pos­al of this mod­ern high spec­i­fi­ca­tion dis­tri­b­u­tion unit. The sale sig­ni­fies the con­tin­ued strength for well-locat­ed high qual­i­ty logis­tics units over 100,000 square feet.”

Hines and Hines Glob­al were advised by C&W and Sav­ills act­ed for AEW.

AEW UK Invest­ment Man­age­ment LLP

AEW UK Invest­ment Man­age­ment LLP employs a well-resourced team com­pris­ing 26 indi­vid­u­als cov­er­ing invest­ment, asset man­age­ment, oper­a­tions and strat­e­gy. It is part of AEW Group, one of the world’s largest real estate man­agers, with €71.2bn of assets under man­age­ment as at 31 March 2020. AEW has over 700 employ­ees, with its main offices locat­ed in Boston, Lon­don, Paris and Hong Kong and offers a wide range of real estate invest­ment prod­ucts includ­ing comin­gled funds, sep­a­rate accounts and secu­ri­ties man­dates across the full spec­trum of invest­ment strate­gies. The Invest­ment Man­ag­er is a 50:50 joint ven­ture between the prin­ci­pals of the Invest­ment Man­ag­er and AEW. In May 2019, AEW UK Invest­ment Man­age­ment LLP was award­ed Prop­er­ty Man­ag­er of the Year at the Pen­sions and Invest­ment Provider Awards. www​.aewuk​.co​.uk

AEW UK Core Prop­er­ty Fund

AEW UK Core Prop­er­ty Fund aims to pro­vide investors with expo­sure to a diver­si­fied, mul­ti­sec­tor port­fo­lio of com­mer­cial prop­er­ty assets through­out the UK. The Fund seeks to achieve supe­ri­or invest­ment returns through rel­a­tive­ly high income returns, strong stock selec­tion and active man­age­ment of all assets. As at 31 March 2020, the Fund had a NAV of £290.1m. For the quar­ter end­ing 31 March 2020, the AEW UK Core Prop­er­ty Fund, over three, five and eight years, was the top per­form­ing bal­anced fund in the MSCI/AREF UK Quar­ter­ly Prop­er­ty Fund Index with an annu­alised total return of 7.6%, 8.5% and 11.5% respec­tive­ly. www​.aewuk​.co​.uk

About Hines Global

Hines Glob­al is a pub­lic, non-list­ed real estate invest­ment trust spon­sored by Hines. It com­menced oper­a­tions in 2014 and invests in com­mer­cial real estate invest­ments locat­ed in the Unit­ed States and inter­na­tion­al­ly. For addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about Hines Glob­al Income Trust, vis­it www​.www​.hines​glob​al​in​cometrust​.com.

About Hines

Hines is a pri­vate­ly owned glob­al real estate invest­ment firm found­ed in 1957 with a pres­ence in 205 cities in 24 coun­tries. Hines has approx­i­mate­ly $133.3 bil­lion of assets under man­age­ment, includ­ing $71 bil­lion for which Hines serves as an invest­ment man­ag­er, includ­ing non-real estate assets, and $62.3 bil­lion for which Hines pro­vides third-par­ty prop­er­ty-lev­el ser­vices. The firm has 165 devel­op­ments cur­rent­ly under­way around the world. His­tor­i­cal­ly, Hines has devel­oped, rede­vel­oped or acquired 1,393 prop­er­ties, total­ing over 459 mil­lion square feet. The firm’s cur­rent prop­er­ty and asset man­age­ment port­fo­lio includes 539 prop­er­ties, rep­re­sent­ing over 232 mil­lion square feet. With exten­sive expe­ri­ence in invest­ments across the risk spec­trum and all prop­er­ty types, and a pio­neer­ing com­mit­ment to sus­tain­abil­i­ty, Hines is one of the largest and most-respect­ed real estate orga­ni­za­tions in the world.

Since enter­ing Europe in 1991, Hines has grown its Euro­pean plat­form to include offices in 16 cities as well as a pres­ence in 49 cities in 11 coun­tries, with €20.9 bil­lion of assets under man­age­ment in Den­mark, Fin­land, France, Ger­many, Greece, Ire­land, Italy, Nether­lands, Poland, Spain and the Unit­ed King­dom. Vis­it www​.hines​.com for more information.