By Sahar Foladi
Australia’s largest pure-play industrial fund, Centuria has officially opened up a massive industrial estate in Dandenong South.
The development known as, Southside Industrial Estate provides 40,529 sqm of industrial accommodation across the eight hectare site.
“It’s a huge investment for the area. When we looked at this it was a brown filled site that didn’t have anything on it, it was totally unutilised and we were able to work with the Centuria team together to produce a vision for a new industrial estate,” Head of Development, Andre Bali said.
The six-unit site located on 95-105 South Gippsland Hwy is completely leased demonstrating the demand for urban industrial assets in the area.
Tenants range from domestic to international entities and have already begun operations from the estate.
Global packaging businesses, Orora and San Miguel Yamamurra Australasia Group are among the tenants.
“San Miguel was the first tenant in here. A few others are doing their own internal fit outs so that’ll take a few months.
“San Miguel was pretty keen to start this facility soon so in the next few months it’ll be fully operational,’ Mr Bali said.
The new $88.8 million industrial facility is set to operate ahead of Christmas, creating 300 jobs for the locals.
“We did a lot of demographic and background analyses into what the needs were for the area. There’s a lot of employment leaving the area so to build an estate like this we’re able to secure jobs for this local area,” Mr Bali said.
Mayor of Greater Dandenong, Eden Foster was present to officiate the ceremony.
“The South-east is an area where there isn’t a lot of room in terms of industrial buildings and estates, so to be able put this in place is fantastic and gives opportunities for the locals but also further develops business in the area too,” Mayor Foster said.
In light of Dandenong’s increasing unemployment rates, the mayor said this is a fantastic opportunity for the locals.
“Being a five star green star in industrial estate as well falls in line with the Councils climate emergency strategy so it ticks a lot of the boxes there.
“Our focus is on rejuvenating Greater Dandenong to create a municipality that supports industrial entrepreneurship and quality outcomes for the south east region. We are excited to see the sustainable construction of this estate locally,” the mayor said.
The property was developed by Cadence Property Group on behalf of Commercial and Industrial Property (CPI) across a 20-month development period.
CIP Fund Manager and Centuria Head of Industrial, Jesse Curtis said, “CIP capitalised on a rare opportunity to bring to market additional supply of industrial real estate within Melbourne’s land-constrained southeast industrial heartland, where vacancy is currently 0.08%.”
CIP has recently broke ground with a $31 million industrial development in Canning Vale, WA.
Among the great projects is also a five-unit estate in Campbellfield Victoria, in partnership with Cadence that is in the planning stage at the moment.
“This is definitely one of the biggest ones that we’ve done. We’ll be doing another one soon on a similar scale and a few others nationally as well, that we’re looking to initiate,” Mr Bali said.
He said Centuria is moving towards newer and bigger assets to build a larger portfolio with five star, green star ratings across the projects.
Centuria Capital Group (CNI) manages 15 assets in Melbourne’s southeast on behalf of its investors.
This asset adds a critical mass to a core of urban infill industrial market.
Upon the completion of the Southside, Centuria’s Victorian portfolio worth has bumped to $1.8 billion across 43 assets.
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