UK investment manager Newcore Capital has sold two industrial open storage (IOS) assets in Greater London for a total of £22m, part of its Newcore Strategic Situations IV value-add fund.
The first sale concerned an 11.45-acre asset in Ickenham, sold for £10m to an owner-occupier industrial plant and machinery hire business. Newcore acquired the site in August 2021 when it was a disused former R&D facility.
It has since redeveloped it into four self-contained separate IOS yards with an accompanying office space created through the conversion of an existing building, following planning consent from the Greater London Authority in September.
The second sale involved an eight-acre asset in Harefield, sold for £12m after Newcore acquired the site in Februrary 2021 as an existing IOS facility.
Following the initial acquisition, the company sought to drive rental income during rent reviews and to formalise its planning strategy, achieving a 31% rental uplift and planning permission for over 10 years of IOS use in August.
Hugo Llewelyn, chief executive at Newcore Capital, said: “These disposals adhere to our value-add strategy of investing in assets that can be repurposed to enable societally critical services that require the use of physical space and are thus resilient to the deflationary effects of technological change.”
The two assets have been sold out of the company’s fourth fund in its Newcore Strategies Situations value-add fund series, which is fully committed having reached a final close in 2019 at £100m. The fund has so far realised £45.5m of assets, with a total gross levered internal rate of return of 21.9%.
The company is currently investing on behalf of its fifth value-add fund, NSS V, which reached a final close at £190m in 2023. It also launched a core-plus vehicle, The Newcore Social Infrastructure Fund, which reached a close this spring with £100m of investment capacity and is targeting £375m in equity commitments.
Newcore was advised by Lambeth Smith Hampton.
Image: Hugo Llewelyn @ Newcore Capital
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