Aquila Capital enters Spain’s logistics market with mega deal.

Aquila has purchased half a million square meters in Toledo through its property development subsidiary, AQ Acentor, thus entering the property sub-sector in Spain. The investment fund has extensive experience in Germany’s logistics sector having carried out various projects.

The tract of land is located in the Central Iberum Multimodal platform in Illescas (Toledo) and has been sold by the JV formed by Urban Castilla La Mancha and Plataforma Central Iberum Gestión de Proyectos. The developer plans to carry out urban planning and pre-leasing until June 2020 and this will be followed by urbanization which will last approximately 15 months, so that the first warehouses can be ready by mid-2021.

The investment fund plans to install photo voltaic panels on the roofs of all its logistic warehouses to compensate carbon dioxide emissions. In fact, renewable energies is another area of expertise of the fund and in March 2019, it purchased project rights to more than 700MW renewable energy projects in Spain, including more than 400MW in onshore wind and 300MW in solar. Construction of these projects is expected to begin at the end of this year and be connected to the grid by 2021.

With the addition of the latest renewable energy project rights, Aquila Capital has expanded its project portfolio on the Iberian Peninsula to more than 1GW, having established its first project in Portugal in 2017.“To us, Spain and Portugal are key locations for our institutional investors and we intend to further expand our operations in the area.”

Commenting on these acquisitions, Aquila Capital’s CEO, Roman Rosslenbroich, has described Spain’s logistic sector as «attractive» and explained that Spain offers opportunities for investors «to diversify across solar, wind and hydro.