Hines Global Income Trust Acquires Royal Mail Sorting Warehouse, Edinburgh

£25M deal is the third Hines Global investment in UK logistics in 2019

(LON­DON) – Hines, the inter­na­tion­al real estate firm, is pleased to announce that Hines Glob­al Income Trust, Inc. (“Hines Glob­al”) has acquired the Roy­al Mail sort­ing ware­house in Edin­burgh from RPMI RailPen for around £25m.

The 215,745-square-foot facil­i­ty, occu­pied by Roy­al Mail, is locat­ed on Edinburgh’s Sighthill Indus­tri­al Estate adja­cent to Her­mis­ton Gait Retail Park to the west end of the city. The prop­er­ty serves as the col­lec­tion and sort­ing point for all mail from the east side of Scot­land and employs over 700 peo­ple on site.

The acqui­si­tion marks the third invest­ment in UK logis­tics assets by Hines Glob­al in 2019. Hines Glob­al acquired a 139,387-square-foot asset in Mil­ton Keynes, occu­pied by men’s cloth­ing retail­er Charles Tyr­whitt, and a 270,248-square-foot dis­tri­b­u­tion facil­i­ty in Bris­tol, occu­pied by DSG Retail, in Novem­ber 2019.

Sher­ri Schugart, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of Hines Glob­al, said: ​“We are excit­ed to expand Hines Global’s pres­ence in the UK logis­tics mar­ket by com­plet­ing our third strate­gic logis­tics acqui­si­tion in the UK and our ninth acqui­si­tion world­wide this year. We con­tin­ue to see attrac­tive oppor­tu­ni­ties to acquire high-qual­i­ty assets in strate­gic mar­kets globally.”

Greg Coop­er, Hines UK direc­tor of indus­tri­al and logis­tics, said: ​“The site is a key loca­tion for Roy­al Mail and is well posi­tioned to serve Edin­burgh and the wider east of Scot­land. We con­tin­ue to see val­ue in logis­tics assets that ben­e­fit from close prox­im­i­ty to estab­lished dis­tri­b­u­tion nodes and good tenants.”

ACRE Cap­i­tal Real Estate advised Hines Glob­al on the deal and Knight Frank rep­re­sent­ed RPMI Railpen. RPMI Railpen (Railpen) is respon­si­ble for the safe­keep­ing and invest­ment of cir­ca £30 bil­lion on behalf of the Rail­ways Pen­sion Scheme’s 350,000 mem­bers who are con­nect­ed to the rail­way industry.

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, vis­it www​.hinesse​cu​ri​ties​.com/​c​u​r​r​e​n​t​-​o​f​f​e​r​i​n​g​s​/​hgit/.

Hines is a pri­vate­ly owned glob­al real estate invest­ment firm found­ed in 1957 with a pres­ence in 219 cities in 23 coun­tries. Hines has approx­i­mate­ly $124.3 bil­lion of assets under man­age­ment, includ­ing $63.8 bil­lion for which Hines pro­vides fidu­cia­ry invest­ment man­age­ment ser­vices, and $60.5 bil­lion for which Hines pro­vides third-par­ty prop­er­ty-lev­el ser­vices. The firm has 148 devel­op­ments cur­rent­ly under­way around the world. His­tor­i­cal­ly, Hines has devel­oped, rede­vel­oped or acquired 1,362 prop­er­ties, totalling over 449 mil­lion square feet. The firm’s cur­rent prop­er­ty and asset man­age­ment port­fo­lio includes 514 prop­er­ties, rep­re­sent­ing over 222 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 47 cities in 12 coun­tries, with €18.2 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.