Greener, happier, more productive

‘Eurobuild CEE’: What do you do to ensure your warehouses are environmentally friendly?

Michał Samborski, development director, Panattoni: Well, it’s a whole bunch of things. The most important of these is that if you want your buildings to be environmentally friendly, you can’t just focus on one area – you need to consider many aspects. We are now, for example, planting a wider variety of greenery, so that instead of having just lawns, there’s also greenery that’s tall or of medium height around our projects. Thus areas friendly for birds and insects are created. These will be refuges for them. So that’s one direction we are now taking. Another big area is using the right building materials so that we avoid any that are harmful to the environment. We don’t want to choose anything based only on its effectiveness; we also want to consider its environmental impact. The next thing we are doing is following the best construction practices by complying with ecological recommendations, which also include documenting all the construction waste as well as the waste management. Another critical area is the water retention. We want to retain as much water as we can so that we don’t contribute to drying out the land. Now we are doing this everywhere. Sometimes we are just talking about building small ponds but, depending on the soil conditions and zoning, we can also build larger water reservoirs, as huge as 2,000 sqm. Sooner or later such ponds become abundant with vegetation, and various species of bird begin to nest there.

What’s your policy when it comes to the durability of the equipment fitted in your parks? Do you prefer to buy things that last longer or to replace them quite often so that they are always new?

Obviously, the building itself has to last for many years, but some elements, such as the HVAC systems, have their own basic technological life-cycle. The point is to select the right ones and design the building in a way that such installations don’t have to be thrown away after five years. This is especially true of the freezers in warehouses with cold storage. In an increasing number of facilities, we use devices that can be used for much longer and much more effectively. In short, we always want to avoid using things that get thrown out just after the warranty expires – even if there are economic reasons for buying them. For us that doesn’t make sense. And besides, the life-cycles of installations is one of the aspects looked at in BREEAM evaluations.

Are tenants actually interested in all these details? What do they even ask you about?

There are generally two things that are of interest to our clients. One is how much our buildings are environmentally friendly, and the other is how economical they are. Clients are interested in what generates savings for them. And savings come from anything that reduces energy and fuel consumption.

What methods do you have for doing this?

First of all, we update the lighting systems, and this has already become the norm in our new buildings. In fact, we have installed LED lighting in all our facilities. We are also introducing intelligent lighting control systems. The efficiency of our heating systems is constantly being improved. We are also introducing additional control and measuring systems to provide heating where it’s needed and the correct temperature as required. Energy savings can also be made at the level of the building’s structure itself, such as by adding greater insulation thickness. In addition, there are various ways of preventing heat loss during reloading, such as air curtains or adequately insulated gates. And here we come to the technological solutions for reducing both energy consumption and costs.

Such as photovoltaic panels?

Yes, that’s right. Although for now those are generally provided only at the client’s request. But we are continuing to look at this technology. At the moment, a few individual clients are saying that they want this – and in these cases we provide it. We are now implementing such a project for a client in Bydgoszcz. For another, who has commissioned several tailored buildings from us, we are preparing a building for the installation of such panels. It’s not a question of if, but of when we will be doing this on a larger scale. This is something we are thinking about very much and have already implemented in a few projects.

Why are photovoltaics not fitted as standard in Panattoni’s warehouses?

You have to bear in mind that this is still a relatively costly investment, even though it pays off well into the future. That’s why we are closely monitoring the increase in the ratio of the costs required to invest in this to the amount and price of energy it produces. But the trend is clear. Energy is very unlikely to get any cheaper, whereas the price of photovoltaic cells will drop. The profitability of such investment will then increase. In addition to photovoltaic panels, we have another solution that we have been employing for many years – solar panels that use the energy of the sun to heat buildings. Over the many years we having been using this technology it has proven to be effective. And that’s the whole point. All the main environment friendly solutions are in fact mostly about saving energy: energy for transport, for fuel, for heating, for lighting and so on, which at the same time is all good for the environment.

Let’s talk about the situation on the market for a while. Panattoni enjoyed a record first half of the year in 2020. But there is the expectation that in the second half of the year the industrial market will also be impacted by the economic slowdown. So isn’t Covid eventually going to take its toll on you?

I would probably agree that there’s going to be a slowdown in the global economy. But will there be a slowdown in our industry? I’d beg to differ. At the moment tenants are constantly expanding their warehouse stock. There have been regular disruptions to supply chains as a number of them have collapsed; but the era is over where we expect to wait a while for more to be delivered if we have no reserve stock. And although the market is strong, companies have been on the brink of such a situation across Europe, and so some stocking up is needed, which will boost the market further. We can also see that some companies are starting to turn their faces back towards Europe to maybe bring their production back closer to the consumer. These are not big bets for sure, but ten small instances is also not without significance. But let’s even assume that there is a crisis, and that Western European companies start looking for cost optimisation. That would mean transferring part of their activity to cheaper countries. And what that will actually lead to is the ordering of a production facility in Poland, 120 km from Berlin.

Are you getting such orders now?

Yes, of course. That’s why the area close to the German border is developing so well. Panattoni Park Gorzów Wielkopolski, Panattoni Park Szczecin I and Panattoni Park Szczecin II are just a few recent examples of this. The operations that take place there are to serve both Western markets and Poland. So the prospect of the economy slowing down somewhere does not mean necessarily that our industrial sector will be worse off due to it. It may even turn out that for us the Western European slowdown will give us added fuel for growth – and not only for our industry but also the entire economy.