On Tuesday, Blackbrook Capital—a specialist real estate investor in “mission-critical, operationally significant” European assets—announced that it has made its first investment since launching in March of this year.
Blackbrook has acquired a last-mile logistics facility in Greater Copenhagen, Denmark. The facility is currently leased to Danske Fragtmænd, Denmark’s largest and century-old transporter and distributor of LCL (less than container load) freight.
Blackbrook’s Danish transaction marks its first foray into sale-leaseback, single-tenant net lease, and build-to-suit development for commercial real estate in specific European market sectors, since launching with more than EUR 1 billion of committed capital earlier this year.
The firm’s declared areas of investment focus include logistics, light manufacturing, cold storage, health care, hospitality, strategic office and specialty retail assets.
Blackbrook was founded by a pair of seasoned European commercial real estate investors: Chairman Gordon DuGan, who previously served as CEO of net-lease REIT W.P. Carey and also of Gramercy Property Trust, a global investor in single-tenant industrial properties that Blackstone acquired in 2018 for $7.6 billion, and Arvi Luoma, who served as Managing Director and Head of European Investments at WP Carey.
Upon the firm’s launch earlier this spring, DuGan said, “It’s apparent there are inefficiencies available in the European property market for Blackbrook to generate attractive returns…We are very excited about the dynamics of the European market that we are looking to address, and the prospects that lay ahead of us.”
Why Denmark
In announcing the deal, Blackbrook Co-Founder & CEO Arvi Luoma, said: “Denmark and the Nordics as a whole are markets we are highly experienced in, and we look forward to working closely with Danske Fragtmænd as the business develops on its leading market position. This transaction demonstrates that we can move quickly and opportunistically in the current challenging market environment, to secure acquisitions that meet our investment criteria and approach, as well as the timing requirements of our counterparties.
“Denmark’s industrial real estate landscape has many attractive fundamentals. There is a significant supply and demand imbalance for quality logistics assets, including last-mile facilities. With increasing e-commerce penetration, tenant requirements for modern and eco-friendly real estate, and generally constrained opportunities to develop new sites, we expect the Danish market to experience both robust rental growth and asset value appreciation over the long-term,” Luoma added.