Mapped And Dissected: Amazon’s U.K. Locations And Property Tax Base

For the first time Amazon’s entire U.K. property estate has been mapped and the figures used to calculate its property tax base collated.

Commercial property data firm Datscha used land registry data to calculate the total size of Amazon’s U.K. footprint and map its locations.

Datscha data provided to Bisnow showed the online retail giant occupies 18M SF across 52 properties in the U.K. — the equivalent of 30 Shards.

Datscha also used Valuation Office Agency data to show that Amazon’s U.K. estate has a rateable value of £55.7M. This means it would pay around £26.6M in business rates in 2018. In contrast, M&S has a rateable value of around £570M on its nearly 800 stores, 100 of which are to close. The disparity in business rates payments between online and brick-and-mortar retailers has led to calls for a change in the way retailers are taxed.

Amazon’s U.K. estate is spread across the country but has a concentration in London, where Datscha data shows it has 48 property titles across 14 different properties, including its two offices in Midtown and the City and the four Whole Foods stores it now leases after its takeover of the retailer.

Its largest properties are its giant distribution centres in Tilbury, Kent, totalling 2.2M SF, and at Colaville, Leicestershire, and Rugby, Warwickshire, each totalling 1.3M SF.

Its smallest properties are generally the Whole Foods stores, but also more quirky examples, such as a 3K SF railway arch in Hackney which it leases as a photo studio for its growing fashion business.

The Datscha data also shows where Amazon is locating its last mile delivery facilities for London: It has sub 50K SF warehouse facilities in Brent, Welwyn Garden City and Camberley and a 119K SF facility in Merton.

The average size of an Amazon facility in the U.K. is 353K SF, and the average rateable value is £1.2M.

In terms of who are Amazon’s biggest warehouse landlords in the U.K., L&G forward funded the 2.2M SF Tilbury facility for £150M, while developer Mountpark sold the 1.3M SF in Coalville to a Korean client of BNP Paribas Real Estate Investment Management for £126M in 2016. Aviva has the largest number of facilities with three across the country.

The most valuable single property is unsurprisingly its head office, Principal Place on the northern edge of the City of London. Italian Pension Fund Enpam paid £400M for a 50% stake in the building in 2016, with developer Brookfield retaining the other 50%.

And Amazon is likely to continue its rapid pace of expansion, which saw it take 4M SF in 2017 according to data from Savills.

“With online shopping in the U.K. still growing, expect Amazon to occupy more warehouse space, particularly smaller size units in highly populated towns and cities to satisfy last mile delivery requirements,” Datscha Head of Research Lesley Males said.

“They will also occupy more office space as they have announced plans to expand their development centres in Cambridge, Edinburgh and London.”