CILSA to invest €200 million through 2020 in Port of Barcelona Zona d’Activitats Logístiques (ZAL)

• 450,000 m² of logistics warehouses will be built with Leed Gold certification
• Logistics operations in Barcelona were up 38% in the first quarter

CILSA, the public-private partnership that manages the Zona d’Activitats Logístiques (ZAL- Area of Logistics Activities) in the Port of Barcelona, will invest €200 million through 2020 in order to make the most of the land available by building 450,000 m² of logistics warehouses of the highest quality. These will implement energy efficiency, environmental and overall sustainability measures, with Leed Gold certification.

The initiative is part of an expansion plan that will help promote the logistics hub in the Port of Barcelona to make it the top logistics hub in southern Europe, with more than one million square meters of warehouses. The investment required will come from the company’s own resources, capitalization of a participation loan for €20.5 million from shareholders and €75 million in external funding from the European Investment Bank (BEI).

With this project, CILSA will use up all the land it has left to grow in the ZAL. Currently, 97% of the available land is occupied and more space is needed for e-commerce operators, mainly, who want to move into the area. The total constructed floor space in the ZAL is 635,280 m² and CILSA manages 403,000 m² of this. CILSA is held 63% by the Port of Barcelona, 32% by Merlin Properties and 5% by the state participation society SEPES.

Logistics operations in Barcelona up 38% in the first quarterAccording to data from real estate consultancy CBRE, logistics operations in Barcelona totaled 125,000 m² between January and March 2017. This is up 38% from the same period the previous year, when operations involved nearly 90,000 m². Faced with the lack of spaces over 10,000 m² in the first and second rings of the metropolitan area, 60% of all investment went into the third ring. Regarding the vacancy rate, CBRE has observed that it has fallen to 1.2% in the first ring, with just 9,469 m² available. This figure confirms that nearly every space is occupied in this area. In the second and third rings, there are 47,000 m² and 118,000 m² available, respectively.

[05/22/2017]