September 14 2026 20:45
Clarity, conviction and consumer-led growth
Vukile Property Fund’s transformation under Chief Executive Officer, Laurence Rapp reflects his approach to investment: understand the fundamentals, look beyond the obvious, and act with conviction.
It’s been 15 years since Rapp took the helm in 2011, and in that Vukile has evolved from a diversified property owner into a specialist retail real estate investment trust (REIT) with a clear consumer-led strategy. It has realigned its portfolio, strengthened its South African retail base and built substantial businesses in Spain and Portugal and, most recently, Italy.
Today, the JSE- and NSX-listed group has total assets of R63.7bn and ranks among South Africa’s three largest REITs. Close to 70% of its portfolio is in offshore, with its new Italian platform adding to its European exposure. Under Rapp, Vukile has increased its asset value and market capitalisation twelve fold.
In 2013, Vukile was the first South African property company to obtain REIT status, a sign of its ongoing place as an early mover in the country’s listed property sector.
For Rapp, Vukile’s growth is the product of focus rather than scale for its own sake.
“Our success is grounded in strategic clarity and focus,” he says. “We’ve stayed true to a well-defined strategy and executed it with discipline.”
Property and financial markets in his DNA
Rapp’s connection to property and investment began long before his career.
As a child, he would sit with his grandfather and listen to stock exchange reports on the radio. Investment was a regular topic of conversation at home. His father was an accountant and financial adviser, while members of his extended family on both sides were involved in property.
Rapp describes himself as having “property genes on both sides”. He studied property as part of his BCom at the University of the Witwatersrand and completed his honours degree cum laude in 1993. He then built a broad career in finance, gaining experience across equity analysis, banking, financial markets and corporate strategy.
Vukile recruited him in 2010, when he was a director at Standard Bank, and he took over as CEO in 2011. The role allowed him to combine his understanding of financial markets with his longstanding interest in property and business-building.
His early experience as an equity analyst continues to shape his thinking. Rapp takes satisfaction in seeing a carefully developed investment thesis translate into measurable performance.
His process combines the fundamentals of real estate and value investing with a willingness to examine unconventional but actionable opportunities. He reads widely, tests accepted views and looks for connections that others may overlook.
“Ultimately, I believe in sticking to what you understand while looking beyond the obvious,” he says.
A specialist retail business built around the consumer
Under Rapp’s leadership, Vukile has committed itself fully to retail property.
The consumer sits at the centre of its strategy. Vukile seeks to understand how people shop, what local communities need and how its centres can help tenants trade more successfully. It uses these insights to improve tenant mixes, shape leasing decisions, guide capital investment and create relevant retail environments.
“We specialise in retail, and we do so with deep operational intent,” Rapp says. “That means understanding the consumer, designing centres that are tailor-made to meet their needs and aligning with tenant success.”
The principle is straightforward. Stronger shopper affinity increases footfall, dwell time and spending. This supports tenant sales, reinforces retailer relationships and creates sustainable rental growth for Vukile.
The group focuses on node- dominant shopping centres anchored by defensive, necessity-based retail. Its tenant base, locally and internationally, includes leading national and international brands, providing diversified, annuity-style cash flows across different markets and economies.
Vukile’s asset-management teams track shopper activity, tenant performance and local trading patterns closely for every shopping centre. Data and technology inform decisions on leasing, promotions, refurbishments and centre extensions, allowing the business to respond to changing consumer behaviour while maintaining high occupancy.
Seeing opportunity ahead of the market
Rapp’s willingness to identify opportunity during uncertain periods has become a defining feature of Vukile’s growth.
The group entered Spain in 2017 through Castellana Properties SOCIMI, its 99.7%-owned, subsidiary. At the time, Spain was emerging from a double-dip recession and its retail property market remained fragmented. Many investors were cautious, but Vukile saw the potential for macroeconomic recovery, which has since been proven accurate, and the opportunity to acquire under-managed assets at attractive prices.
The group began with a portfolio of smaller retail parks. Through focused asset management and operational improvement, Castellana increased net operating income across those original properties by about 23%.
Vukile then built scale, recycled capital and expanded into larger, higher-quality shopping centres. Castellana’s portfolio is now valued at €2.2bn and spans Spain and Portugal. It includes prime assets in Spain’s three largest cities: Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia.
Vukile’s entry into Portugal followed the same broad philosophy. It moved ahead of much of the market, established local capability and applied its specialist retail model rather than investing passively.
“Our entries into Spain and then Portugal were contrarian,” Rapp says. “Their success demonstrates how our ability to see opportunity ahead of the market, and to act with entrepreneurial yet disciplined dealmaking, has been key to scaling the business.”
A new platform in Italy
Vukile has extended this strategy into Italy, where it has established Esperia Properties as a specialist retail real estate platform.
Esperia’s inaugural portfolio comprises three node-dominant shopping centres, and it intends to grow Esperia into an Italian retail property portfolio worth more than €500m over time.
Before entering Italy, Vukile acquired a 35% interest in Pradera Limited, a specialist pan-European retail property asset manager with a 25-year track record and approximately €5 billion of assets under management. The investment became effective in December 2025 and gave Vukile access to established local knowledge and operational capability.
Pradera has managed Esperia’s first three shopping centres for a decade and continues to provide asset-management services, supporting continuity from the outset.
Vukile believes Italy offers many of the characteristics that first attracted it to Spain. These include strong household wealth, relatively low consumer debt, limited new retail supply and attractive acquisition yields. The country also has a strong culture of discretionary spending on fashion, food and beverage and experiential retail.
E-commerce accounts for about 10% of Italian retail sales, the lowest penetration rate in Europe, while the country ranks second for cumulative tenant sales growth since 2019.
The expansion reflects Vukile’s preference for building a local operating business alongside a portfolio of assets.
“What Vukile is doing in Italy follows the same approach that served us so well in Spain and Portugal,” Rapp says. “We enter markets with conviction, add value through active management, build scale over time and always stay firmly focused on our retail specialisation.”
A strong South African foundation
Vukile’s European growth remains rooted in a substantial South African business.
Its R19.5bn South African portfolio serves some of the country’s most compelling consumer markets. The group has a strong presence in township, rural, commuter and value-focused retail nodes, where its centres benefit from established trading patterns, strong demand and limited competing supply.
These shopping centres are closely connected to the communities they serve. Vukile seeks to improve them through targeted extensions, refurbishments, better tenant mixes and investment in renewable energy and operational efficiency.
The South African portfolio also supports the group’s broader diversification. Vukile’s income is spread across countries, regions, assets, tenants and brands, reducing its dependence on any single economy or retail market.
“No business is risk-free, but resilience can be built into the model,” Rapp says.
For Vukile, resilience begins with diversification and a focus on dominant assets anchored by defensive retail. Limited new supply in many of the areas where it operates reduces the likelihood of competing schemes being developed nearby.
The group’s financial structure adds another layer of protection. Low gearing, favourable funding margins and disciplined capital allocation allow it to remain both agile and defensive.
Leadership through crisis
Rapp’s instinct to look for opportunity in difficult conditions was tested most severely during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Vukile entered the crisis in a strong position and was outperforming many of its peers. Yet its share price fell by about 75% as the market reassessed the outlook for listed property and physical retail.
For Rapp, the experience exposed the limits of the belief that a well-run business will always be rewarded immediately by the market. External shocks can overwhelm even strong operating fundamentals in the short term.
The recovery that followed became one of the defining periods of his career.
Rapp helped guide a relatively young management team through the crisis, drawing on his experience while giving colleagues the space to develop as leaders. The period strengthened relationships across the business and created greater cohesion at a time when people were physically separated.
Vukile’s subsequent operational and share-price recovery demonstrated the underlying resilience of the company and its portfolio.
The experience also reinforced Rapp’s belief in disciplined decision-making during periods of extreme uncertainty. Rather than abandoning its strategy, Vukile protected its balance sheet, maintained close relationships with tenants and positioned itself to benefit as markets normalised.
People, performance and stewardship
Rapp credits much of Vukile’s progress to its people.
“Ultimately, our growth is powered by people,” he says. “A strong, focused team with a shared commitment to performance and progress.”
The group has developed specialist teams in each of its markets while maintaining a common investment philosophy and operating culture. Local expertise is central to its approach, particularly when entering new countries.
This combination of local leadership and group-wide discipline allows Vukile to act with the knowledge of a domestic operator while drawing on the capital, governance and expertise of an international listed company.
Rapp also emphasises that Vukile is investing on behalf of others.
“We never lose sight of the fact that we are stewards of other people’s money,” he says. “It’s built into our culture.”
That stewardship informs the group’s approach to acquisitions, funding and dividends. Vukile has paid a dividend in every year since listing, growing it each year except one at the height of the Covid pandemic
For Rapp, growing sustainable income for investors is a more important measure of success than expansion alone. New investments must strengthen the quality, resilience and long-term earnings capacity of the business. It’s all about the steady success of creating value through continuous compounding.
Growth with purpose
Vukile’s next phase will remain grounded in retail specialisation, operational excellence and disciplined capital allocation.
The group plans to continue unlocking value from its existing assets through leasing, extensions and refurbishments. It will also pursue bolt-on acquisitions in its core markets of South Africa, Spain and Portugal, while building scale in Italy.
“Vukile means ‘a new dawn’, and that spirit of progress and charting new horizons is built into our DNA,” Rapp says.
The group’s expansion under his leadership has been ambitious but delivered with precision. That combination of clarity, contrarian thinking and operational discipline has shaped Vukile’s development from a South African property company into an international retail real estate business.
It also reflects Rapp’s own career: grounded in property, informed by financial markets and defined by a willingness to keep building from strong foundations, even in the throes of a storm of challenging market and economic conditions.
alistair@propertyflash.co.za
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