The vigour of youth

A recent report published by Cushman & Wakefield H&B on warehouse areas in Poland predicts an improvement in the sector. It comes as something of a surprise that the majority of the new and biggest investments may soon come from developers embarking of their first projects in the country.

Better late than never

Technical personnel offering environmental consultancy services from Grontmij, a Dutch company, first came to Poland ten years ago, with the project management team established two years ago. Despite this it is only this year that the company is beginning operations as a developer of warehouses. Błażej Ciesielczak, project manager for Grontmij Real Estate Polska, admits, "While we have become the market leader in Hungary, in Poland the competition beat us to the market by several years. We only enter markets where our customers are already active. Up until now none of their investments has been in Poland." This apart, Grontmij is currently preparing several investments in the warehouse sector, the most advanced of which is the Stryków project.

The easygoing Dutch

Grontmij intends to construct a warehouse park of up to 275,000 sqm, for use both by logistics operators and for the textile industry. This will be on a 60 ha site next to the A2 motorway, some 3 kilometres from the planned intersection with the A1 motorway. The company expects to construct the first hangar covering 20,000 sqm after receiving the necessary permit later this summer. It will take around 3 months to complete but will only begin when the company finds a tenant. Units for rent will start from 2,000 sqm. Mr. Ciesielczak listed the possible various forms that cooperation could take, "We can build to suit, rent properties, sell the land or conclude "construction deal" contracts. Cooperation may also take the form of constructing a building for a customer which will be larger than the customer's needs needs, with the "additional" area being rented out to 3rd-parties. This practice allows the cost borne by a tenant to be reduced, claims Ciesielczak. The rate per square metre will be between EUR 3 and EUR 3.5 per month in Stryków, with a further 50 to 75 cents per month for running costs. An identical unit to that being built in Stryków will be on 21 ha of land in Gontki near Poznań, on national highway no.11, 2 km from motorway A2. The possibility also exists to put a railway siding on the site. Grontmiij is applying for the appropriate building licence and is also studying the feasibility of purchasing other sites in Gliwice and Kraków.

Straight to the heart

Poland Central is a highly appropriate name for a company wishing to construct a warehouse-logistics complex almost in the geographic centre of Poland. A warehouse park to contain almost 500,000 sqm space for letting is to be built on more than 120 ha of land near Piotrków Trybunalski on the only section of the A1 motorway to have been completed, 1.5 km from the road linking Silesia with Warsaw. This logistics and business park will reach its final dimensions only within 5 to 6 years, the first hangar covering 47,000 sqm. The application to obtain a building licence has been submitted, and approval is expected at the turn of July. Grzegorz Bielecki, joint owner of Poland Central, informed us, "We have been in advanced negotiations for almost a year with a French company which within 2 years will require around 90,000 sqm of warehousing space in this region. Talks are continuing but we are already poised to begin construction of a second warehouse of 42,000 sqm." Rent will be around 3.20 EUR / sqm, with an additional 70 to 80 cents/sqm for running costs. Though Poland Central has no experience as a developer of warehouses, one of its consultants who is responsible for investments around Piotrków, is Jan Chudzyński, who was partly responsible for the success of the Europa Park logistics centre at Mszcznów. Financial guarantees for the Poland Central project will be provided by The Ansbacher Group, which is part of the South African First Rand group which is quoted on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Ansbacher runs offshore banking institutions.

The agressive British

Cushman & Wakefield H&B's report which is entitled "Production and Warehouse space in Poland" mentions Parkridge of the UK as one of the more aggressive developers entering the market. The company which has not yet put up a single warehouse owns locations in five places of key importance for transport in Poland: Poznań, Wrocław, Piotrków Trybunalski, Będzin (in Silesia) and Nadarzyn. The warehouse in Poznań will be one of Poland's largest an ultimate targeted size of 560,000 sqm. The remaining Parkridge warehouses will be almost 300,000 sqm. Hans van Luijken who heads Parkridge's Polish branch and who one year ago still managed Prologis, the largest warehouse developer in Poland, didn't wish to give further details of his firm's investments. He made it clear that it will still be several months before information about investments is disclosed.