Gulf Islamic Investments (GII), a UAE-based Islamic financial services company, has revealed the acquisition of nearly one-million-sq-ft of logistics facilities on behalf of its investors, for $144 million.

The two state-of-the-art Grade A logistics centres, are located in Dortmund Germany, and serves as Amazon’s key logistics centres supplying goods to 29 other facilities, it said.

Rasmala, a leading independent investment management group, has acted as a strategic co-advisor and co-investor on this acquisition assisting on all aspects of it, said a statement.

This newly built facilities are leased out to Amazon on a long-term unbreakable lease with regular rental uplifts linked to Germany CPI, it added.

Mohammed Al-Hassan, co- founder and CEO, GII, said: “Our company’s real estate investment strategy is to have an exposure to good yielding commercial assets with investment grade tenants. We believe this transaction perfectly matches our investment strategy.”

“Dortmund offers a strategic location for a high-growth market and is one of the most important logistics hubs in whole Europe. Germany also produces about one-quarter of the EU's GDP, with investment safety rates and remarkable returns,” he said.

Al Hassan further confirmed that GII plans to keep acquiring high quality income yielding real estate assets in US, UK and Germany and to invest selectively in attractive value-add development opportunities in the GCC region.

Pankaj Gupta, co-CEO of GII, said: “The property marks the 5th international real estate asset acquired by our company in the last two years and the first in Germany.”

“We see this transaction as an extremely suitable investment for our clients in these challenging investment environment as it not only gives a high single digit cash-on-cash yield but also very strong lease covenants with a marquee tenant like Amazon in a stable geography like Germany,” he said.

“The investment further establishes GII capabilities of providing whole value-chain services and hence offering best in class opportunities,” he added.

After this transaction, the total investment of GII in European market crossed $500 million, while the value of the investment portfolio exceeded $1.3 billion, it stated. – TradeArabia News Service