August 21 2025 14:25
Andrew Coombs, CEO of Sirius Real Estate
Sirius Real Estate, the owner and operator of branded business and industrial parks providing conventional space and flexible workspace in Germany and the UK, has completed the acquisition of the Hartlebury Trading Estate in Worcestershire for £101.1m, excluding acquisition costs. CEO Andrew Coombs said the acquisition was transformational for Sirius’ UK business which operates as BizSpace, where it will increase the size of the portfolio by 18% to 8.3-million square feet, while growing the gross asset value by approximately 20% and immediately boosting revenues by 10%.
This transaction follows the company’s announcement last of acquisitions in Dresden and Bedford and is the ninth business park it has bought in 2025, with a total investment value of €289.9m that has added €20m of net operating income.
The estate currently generates net operating income of £6.9m from more than 100 tenants, with a WAULT of 4.1 years. It has been acquired with 84% occupancy, with the majority of vacant space either recently refurbished or newly built, presenting attractive reversionary opportunities. The transaction reflects an EPRA net initial yield of 6.45% after acquisition costs, while also offering reversion potential through letting of vacancy and asset management initiatives.
Hartlebury Trading Estate is set on a 171-acre site comprising a freehold multi-let industrial park with approximately 1.5-million square feet of predominantly warehouse accommodation, alongside 17 acres of industrial open storage plots. Sirius has already identified a number of opportunities to increase income, in line with its value-add asset management strategy, including environmentally focused upgrades in the near term.
With low building coverage of just 19% and configured in a way that allows it to be separated into three separate estates, Hartlebury Trading Estate offers asset management opportunities, including benefitting from two development plots that provide further optionality and longer-term potential to extend, according to Sirius
This business park was originally built by the Ministry of Defence as an RAF maintenance base. In addition to its attractiveness to traditional occupiers, it is therefore also well suited to defence related businesses.
The asset benefits from its Midlands location to the west of Birmingham and north of Gloucester, where the 60 acre Vantage Point business park which the company acquired last year is located. Hartlebury is 10 miles from the M5 motorway, while a train station adjacent to the northern entrance of the estate is an attractive proposition for occupiers whose staff can commute from surrounding locations. The region is serviced by Birmingham Airport, the U.K.’s seventh largest airport, and East Midlands Airport, which is the UK’s number one airport for pure freight.
“The acquisition of Hartlebury Trading Estate marks a significant and highly strategic milestone for our UK BizSpace platform. Adding over 1.5-million sq ft across 171 acres, this transaction materially scales our UK portfolio and positions us as a leading player in the Midlands region. The estate offers immediate, robust cash flow from a well-diversified and stable tenant base, while also presenting a number of opportunities to leverage the combined expertise of the Sirius and BizSpace platforms to enhance existing revenues and unlock new income streams through hands-on asset management, further enhancing the yield,” said Coombs.
“In 2025 alone, we’ve secured investments of just under €290m into income-generating business parks, bringing a total of €20m of new initial net operating income into the Group. This demonstrates our ability to source and execute accretive investments that not only strengthen our rent roll but also unlock long-term growth potential through development and repositioning initiatives,” Coombs said.
Coombs said Sirius had fully allocated the capital from our two equity raises in November 2023 and July 2024, as well as the corresponding leverage that was unlocked from the May 2024 bond tap and January 2025 bond issuance.
“While we still have some balance sheet headroom remaining as a result of the valuation increase we achieved in the last financial year, we are pleased that our capital deployment has been successful and shareholders will see the effects of the growth and accretion it brings come through in our second half results and beyond,” said Coombs.
alistair@propertyflash.co.za
