Blackstone puts 100m euros of European warehouses up for sale

New York

BLACKSTONE Group is seeking to sell about 100 million euros (S$161 million) of properties from its European urban warehouse business.

The investment firm has hired Savills to find a buyer for the mostly small Nordic properties, people with knowledge of the process said.

The sale comes as it looks to streamline the Mileway unit following a period of rapid expansion, and focus it purely on urban warehouses, the people said, asking not to be identified because the process is private.

The so-called non-core properties were acquired within larger portfolios that Blackstone bought for the platform, they added. Mileway is now valued at more than 10 billion euros after launching less than two years ago, they said.

Spokespeople for Blackstone and Savills declined to comment.

Urban warehouses are among Blackstone's biggest current bets, with the firm banking on sustained demand and rising rents for properties that cut delivery times for booming e-commerce firms.

Last month it completed the financing for the acquisition of 132 Swedish logistics properties from Castellum, the latest in a series of large deals for Mileway.

The strategy echoes that of Logicor, the large warehouse business which Blackstone established in 2012, grew and eventually sold to China Investment in 2017 for 12.25 billion euros.

Blackstone has so far sold about 400 million euros of so-called non- core Mileway properties as it hones the portfolio for a future sale or initial public offering, the sources added. BLOOMBERG