Grupo Lar to Invest €250M in New Logistics Developments

28 October 2018 – Expansión

The property developer Grupo Lar is going to bet on the logistics segment in Spain over the coming years, with a planned investment of around €250 million to purchase land and build warehouses.

The Managing Director of Grupo Lar, Miguel Amo, explained that the first project included in that investor package is being carried out in Quart de Poblet (Valencia), where the firm is on the verge of purchasing a plot spanning 40,000 m2. The pre-agreement to the purchase was negotiated in July and the audit has recently been completed prior to the construction of a warehouse measuring 25,000 m2 on the site.

Following that project in Valencia, the new team for the logistics segment at Grupo Lar is preparing and negotiating other investments in Barcelona, Madrid, Málaga, Sevilla and País Vasco, with the “same structure”: minority shareholders and in-house management.

The investments in logistics land have been decided by the property developer Grupo Lar – which is owned in its entirety by the Pereda family – after it was announced that the new strategy of the Socimi, Lar España Real Estate, will focus purely on the shopping centre segment (“retail”).

Grupo Lar owns 10% of Lar España and is that firm’s second largest shareholder. It will also operate the Socimi’s management contract until 2021.

Lar España’s focus on retail has caused the Socimi to divest from other segments, such as residential, offices and logistics.

According to Amo, the difference is that the Socimi’s logistics investments involved finished warehouses, whereas those planned by the group include the acquisition of land and development. In the residential segment, Grupo Lar has a portfolio of land for 15,000 homes, of which around 4,000 are active in the seven markets in which it operates: Mexico, Spain, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Poland and Romania.

The firm expects to close 2018 with around 2,000 homes delivered, for almost €450 million.

In Spain, the group has around 2,000 homes in its portfolio, of which 350 are active, with plans to handover around 250 during 2018.

Original story: Expansión

Translation: Carmel Drake