Hale Capital joint managing directors Robert McMickan and Nicholas Bradley have won backers for their warehousing plans.
Rising real estate fund manager Hale Capital Partners has raised about $800m in fresh equity for its next series of funds in the hot industrial and logistics sectors.
The Australian company, which has become a force in infill real estate in major cities as last-mile logistics has taken off, believes it can capitalise on the next wave of deal making.
While demand for space in some areas has dipped back to more normal levels after the pandemic-driven boom, and rising interest rates could affect speculative projects, Hale believes it is well positioned.
It has raised the $800m equity for the second vintage of its opportunistic and value-add and core-plus vehicles, which it believes set up “meaningful” deployment capacity for the group.
This places it among the top industrial developers, alongside listed players such as Goodman Group, Charter Hall, Stockland, GPT and Mirvac, and offshore players like Asian warehousing giant ESR.
Hale will have an opportunistic fund focused on developing modern, last-mile logistics facilities in supply-constrained urban markets, consistent with its initial focus.
This sector is taking off along the eastern seaboard as new infrastructure makes delivering goods faster and consumers gravitate towards events such as Black Friday.
It will also have a value-add and core-plus vehicle targeting high-quality income-producing assets and repositioning strategies.
Hale said the fundraising represented a major recommitment from founding capital partners, Canada’s Oxford Properties and private equity firm Warburg Pincus.
The group’s founders – Robert McMickan and Nicholas Bradley – said this support underscored their conviction in the supply-constrained Australian infill logistics sector and Hale’s business.
A new institutional capital partner has also committed to the new vehicles as part of the fundraising. The Australian understands the support has come from a major Asian sovereign wealth fund. But Hale has declined to comment on the origin of the funder.
Real estate agent Cushman & Wakefield’s Tony Iuliano and Adrian Rowse assisted in the introduction of the new institution.
Hale is putting the fresh capital to work and in recent months has closed about $300m of new investments, with a particular focus on the eastern Melbourne market.
The firm flagged that it would continue to deploy a meaningful level of capital across existing assets and development strategies when favourable risk adjusted returns could be found.
Management is bullish about the prospects of the latest raisings.
“The new vehicles reflect conviction in the long-term growth opportunities in the supply-constrained segments of the Australian logistics market and Hale’s vertically integrated platform and its ability to consistently deliver across single and multi-level logistics, cold storage and industrial outdoor storage,” the company founders said.
The company’s upbeat outlook is in line with forecasts that the logistics and industrial sector is set for a big year.
The market has effectively been repriced over the past two years due to interest rate rises and space dynamics returning to normal after the jump in demand during the pandemic.
Cushman & Wakefield said $38bn in global capital was now targeting local logistics and industrial assets across a wide range of strategies. While domestic capital accounts for $8.1bn, offshore capital is the largest proportion at almost 80 per cent.