Eyeing Japanese metropolises
There is strong demand for modern warehousing in Japan’s metropolitan regions. E-Shang Redwood is considered one of Asia’s top logistics real estate specialists. Now the state-owned Azeri fund Sofaz is investing in one of the company’s funds.
Azerbaijan’s state-owned fund Sofaz is set to invest about USD 100 million in a fund owned by the logistics real estate developer E-Shang Redwood (ESR), namely the Japan Logistics Fund II. ESR is headquartered in Singapore, and is particularly active in China and Japan too. The new Azeri investors have clearly decided that the strong Japanese market for logistics real estate is particularly attractive.
Apparently there is currently great demand for modern warehousing in the country, as the number of cargo consignments reaching Japan is rising steadily, as Stuart Gibson, the head of ESR’s Japanese national branch office, confirmed.
At the end of January the firm said that construction of a large new four-storey warehouse covering around 229,000 sqm was set to begin in the city of Ichikawa, in greater Tokyo (pictured). The facility’s catchment area covers the neighbouring metropolises of Tokyo and Chiba, with around 20 million inhabitants, Gibson elaborated.
ESR currently manages logistics properties covering no less than 7.3 million sqm in Japan, China, Singapore and South Korea. The firm has focused its activities on metropolitan regions, where consumption is high and the benefits of global trade have a greater impact.
Sofaz is not the first institutional investor to make a go of it in ESR. Investment professionals such as Warburg Pincus, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are all already on board too.
