Centennial Spends $35m on NSW Logistics Hub

Property fund manager Centennial has put its foot on a large-scale logistics facility west of Sydney with plans to reconfigure and further develop it into a prime, multi-unit logistics estate worth $65 million.

Centennial paid $35 million for the site at 243 Forrester Road, St Marys, in an off-market deal brokered by Colliers International’s Gavin Bishop and Sean Thompson.

The transaction closes out Centennial's mid-space focused global investment fund, CILP 1—its initial partnership fund with leading global investment firm KKR.

The fund now comprises 23 assets covering 206,000sqm of gross floor area. Once repositioned and fully developed, the fund’s assets will have an estimated value of $550 million on completion, according to Centennial.  

Now known as the Central West Distribution Centre, the newly acquired site is less than 5km from the Great Western Highway and M4 Motorway and 2km from Pacific National's St Marys Freight Hub, which has now begun operations.

The property has dual entry-exit points and more than 1000sq m of office and amenities, 14,153sq m of high clearance warehouse or manufacturing space.

The site was leased to Chrisco Hampers prior to the Centennial settlement for the short term.

The planned refurbishment, which will be completed in the first quarter of 2023, will include a new hardstand and an extension to the warehouse to “offer high-quality tenancies that suit modern industrial and logistics operators in an underserviced land-constrained mid-space market”, Centennial said.

▲ The acquisition is the final one for the Centennial-KKR fund.

The refurbished property will continue to be marketed for lease, with areas from 2869sq m up to 15,193sq m for the entire premises.

Centennial executive director and chief executive industrial and logistics Paul Ford said the purchase represented a very compelling opportunity.

“Given the asset’s highly land-constrained central urban industrial location, and the fact that the property is being acquired with quality improvements at or below land value, it immediately met several of our acquisition criteria,” he said.

St Marys, 45km west of the city, is near Sydney’s major distribution centres, Amazon’s Fulfillment Centre and the future Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport, which is on track to begin operations in 2026.