WARSAW: According to a report by real estate services company JLL, 2014 was a busy year for both tenants and developers of warehouse and industrial space in Poland. Even though new market players did not make the kind of spectacular lease transactions Amazon made in 2013, demand on the warehouse market remained high for the second year running.
Lease contracts for a total of 2.06 million sq m of warehouse space were signed, which marked the best-ever result for this segment of the Polish real estate market, 6 percent more than in 2013. Significantly, net demand totaled 1.4 million sq m, an increase of 7.5 percent from 2013. According to Tomasz Olszewski, director for warehouse and industrial space in Central and Eastern Europe at JLL, these high figures are due to a booming economy combined with improving road infrastructure and the expansion of e-commerce, retail chains and manufacturing businesses.
The Warsaw region accounted for the largest part of the volume of new contracts last year. The largest contracts in Poland were signed by companies such as Czerwona Torebka (54,000 sq m at MLP Poznań Zachód), ID Logistics (46,000 sq m at Point Park Mszczonów) and GE (45,000 sq m at a built-to-suit project developed by Panattoni in Bielsko-Biała). In terms of renewed contracts, the biggest tenants were Carrefour (46,000 sq m at Distribution Park Będzin) and P&G (38,000 sq m at Prologis Park Sochaczew). As usual, the highest demand for warehouse space was generated by logistics operators, who leased almost 607,000 sq m of space (43 percent of net demand) under new contracts.
