Charter Hall digs deep for $100m Hastings Deering deal
Charter Hall’s unlisted industrial fund has struck one of the larger sale-and-leaseback transactions on multiple sites in Queensland this year, in a $100 million-plus deal with equipment giant Hastings Deering.
The purchase by Charter Hall Prime Industrial Fund includes three key industrial assets at Archerfield and Acacia Ridge in Brisbane.
Hastings Deering is well known in Queensland and the Northern Territory, where it sells and rents machinery including Caterpillar earthmoving equipment, mostly for the resources sector. In 1992 the company was taken over by Malaysia’s Sime Darby.
The three properties in Brisbane are fully leased on 20-year triple-net terms.
The leases include two 10-year options to renew and are guaranteed by Hastings Deering and its Malaysian parent. They include fixed rent reviews.
MinterEllison advised Hastings Deering on the transaction.
“This transaction was the product of a long and sustained period of hard work from the Hastings Deering team and its consultants to position the properties for divestment,” said MinterEllison partner Adrian Rich.
“We are absolutely thrilled for Hastings Deering in achieving this result, and were delighted to work with them over this period on such a significant matter for its business, and also the Queensland industrial property market more generally.”
The Charter Hall fund has a portfolio of 48 properties worth $2.4 billion.
It has been busy in Queensland this year. In June it bought Coca-Cola Amatil’s main Brisbane manufacturing plant at Richlands for $156 million.
The ASX-listed beverage company put the Brisbane property on the market in March as it looked to set up a sale-and-leaseback deal for the site.
Spread across 24.9 hectares, the site at 220-260 Orchard Road will have more than 81,000 square metres of space in two facilities by the end of this year.
The Charter Hall fund has taken over the property, with a 20-year lease back to Coca-Cola Amatil and 3 per cent annual rent rises.
The unlisted fund is also willing to invest into development sites.
In February this year it acquired a 5.6-hectare industrial site in Huntingwood, in Sydney’s west, from skincare company Beiersdorf for $29.7 million.
The fund plans to develop a prime A-grade, 32,715 sq m warehouse and distribution facility with a completion value of $65 million, and has already lodged a development application for the project.
