Blackstone buys into Queensland airport business park
The estate near the airport has 15,409 sqm of lettable area across the six facilities. Picture: Liam Kidston
Private equity and real estate giant Blackstone has swooped on a Queensland last mile logistics asset being sold by Dexus Wholesale Property Fund in a play worth just over $50m.
The group has signalled its desire to grow in smaller facilities that can cater to e-commerce tenants, and has been building up its holdings after selling off its $3.8bn Milestone Logistics property portfolio in 2021.
Blackstone has focused on under-the-radar purchases that allow it to pursue value-add strategies, and it is scooping up properties off market.
The business park had been in the sights of Growthpoint’s funds arm, which had planned to launch a new industrial trust to acquire the site on the doorstep of Brisbane Airport.
The listed group was raising for the Growthpoint Hendra Industrial Trust, which targeted an internal rate of return of 12 per cent.
The trust went into due diligence after an on-market campaign on the industrial asset at 441 Nudgee Rd in Hendra at about $50.2m, but Blackstone instead bought the property.
The 20-year-old business park has a site area of 3.43ha and is in proximity to Brisbane Airport, with direct access north and south via the Gateway Motorway. It is only 10km from the Brisbane CBD.
The estate consists of 15,409 sqm of lettable area across the six facilities, with 34 per cent allocated to offices, and it is fully leased with a broad range of users, with 27 per cent of the income secured by the federal government.
The park is on a 34,310 sqm site and has a short average weighted lease expiry of 1.8 years, giving Blackstone an opportunity to create value by improving rental levels to market levels and to extend leases.
Tenants include AEC and Dollars & Sense, as well as about 18 smaller tenants.
Blackstone earlier this year picked up a site in the Sydney suburb of Kingsgrove from a Charter Hall wholesale partnership for $57.5m.
It bought 133 Vanessa St from a wholesale partnership that the local company has with Dutch institutional investor PGGM as it looks to capitalise on rising industrial rents.
