AustralianSuper, the NSW state government鈥檚 investment and financial management arm TCorp, Ivanho茅 Cambridge and Alts have partnered to buy Australia鈥檚 largest intermodal freight facility for A$1.67bn (鈧�1bn).
The consortium is buying Moorebank Logistics Park (MLP) in southwest Sydney from Qube Holdings.
In its biggest direct property investment yet in Australia, AustralianSuper has taken a 40% stake in MLP for A$774m with the three other consortium members each having a 鈥渞oughly 20%鈥� stake in the 243-hectare industrial property.
Logos, the manager and development coordinator of the consortium, also has an equity interest in MLP.
Bevan Towning, AustralianSuper鈥檚 head of property, told 麻豆映画 Real Assets: 鈥淲e see MLP as a nationally-significant infrastructure development.
鈥淚t is going to change the way that containerised freight moves from (nearby) Port Botany through to Moorebank.鈥�
MLP will service link Port Botany, Australia鈥檚 second-biggest container port. Towning said the super fund had a 20% interest in Port Botany.
He said: 鈥淲e can develop up to 850,000sqm of high specification warehousing on the site. Currently, it has around 100,000sqm (of warehouse space).鈥�
Asked if AustralianSuper had entered the logistics sector at the peak of the market, Towning said: 鈥淥ur preference to invest in the sector is through a develop-to-core approach. That way, you get a higher return on costs than you would if just buying a completed investment.鈥�
Towning said the fund adopted a similar strategy when it entered the New Zealand market with Logos in 2019. 鈥淲e bought land and subsequently developed and leased a lot of warehouses on the Wiri industrial site.
鈥淗opefully, we will do the same thing in Moorebank. We are taking a bit more risk, but we think that when there is very strong demand, the risk is reasonable.
In a joint statement, the consortium partners said: 鈥淭his acquisition positions the Logos consortium at the heart of a logistics revolution that will capture economic benefits as the MLP鈥檚 intermodal terminals ramp up, increasing the efficient transfer of goods from Port Botany to customers around Australia.鈥�
The statement said both the federal and NSW governments had invested more than A$500m in infrastructure to the Moorebank locality, including MLP.
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