Blackstone To Merge Warehouse Landlords It Took Private Into New Company

Private equity giant Blackstone wants to combine its logistics holdings in the United Kingdom to create an entity with more than 200 properties totaling 26M SF, making it one of the largest industrial landlords in that country, Bloomberg reports.

The new entity will be called Indurent, formed by joining St. Modwen, Industrials REIT and properties Blackstone acquired via other deals. Blackstone has spent $2.6B so far to ramp up its industrial play, anticipating further growth for industrial rents, according to Bloomberg.

In November, Blackstone secured a $662M loan to fund St. Modwen’s development of about 5M SF of industrial assets in the UK.

The Indurent consolidation may be in preparation for an eventual sale, part of the Blackstone playbook. The company has a history of investing billions in the industrial sector worldwide, then selling or recapitalizing various portfolios at healthy profits, such as it did when it formed and grew Logicor.

That entity had a portfolio of 147M SF in the UK and Europe when Blackstone sold it to China Investment Corp. in 2017 for $13.8B.

In 2022, Blackstone recapitalized Mileway at a value of $24B in the largest-ever real estate deal not involving a listed company. Mileway is an owner of last-mile urban warehouses that Blackstone built up beginning in 2017.

“There are a number of sectors we are quite bullish on,” Blackstone Senior Managing Director Peter Krause said during a Bisnow event in 2022, naming film studios, life sciences and data centers. “But on a global basis, logistics is one of the top.”