Aging warehouses lure investors

"Logistics is one of the major building blocks for a successful e-commerce business model," said Praveen Sengar, principal analyst at Gartner in Singapore. While a lack of infrastructure could be an impediment to growth, Sengar said, Alibaba and other e-commerce firms are investing heavily, and have been able to cope with peak demand so far, offering next-day or even same-day deliveries in many large cities.

Improving the logistics of China's warehouses has been prioritized by none other than Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma. Last year, Alibaba announced a plan to lead a consortium to invest $16 billion in the first phase of building a national logistics business, a unit of Alibaba to be chaired by Ma. Alibaba declined to comment for this article.

Alibaba's efforts to update logistics in China haven't gone unnoticed. US e-commerce company ShopRunner, a rival to Amazon, will use Alibaba's domestic logistics network when it launches in China later this year.

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JD.com Inc, ranked second behind Alibaba in China e-commerce if a long way behind, is also investing. In a filing for its own US listing worth up to $1.7 billion, it said it plans to spend up to $1.2 billion over the next three years to buy land and vehicles and build warehouses for its logistics network.

Since the beginning of 2013, around $22 billion has been earmarked by buyout firms, including Blackstone and Carlyle, and private companies to buy land and build new warehouses in China.

That is just a fraction of what the logistics industry expects will be needed to keep pace with the country's consumer boom.

Beijing has also made a modern supply chain a priority as it looks to build a consumer-driven economy. The warehouse building boom has lured not just buyout firms such as Carlyle, Hopu Investment Management and RRJ Capital, but specialist international companies like GLP, Goodman Group and Prologis Inc are already sinking money into building large warehouses in China.

The sector is also attractive to investors seeking a proxy for e-commerce industries, while real estate developers such as China Vanke Co Ltd are diversifying into warehousing as a hedge against a faltering residential property market.

"China's warehouse and logistics providers are trading at favorable valuations. In China, logistics space per capita is only one twelfth of that in the US and providers stand to benefit as e-commerce expands," said Tony Hsu, a portfolio manager at hedge fund Dalton Investments.

So far this year, GLP has built 280 warehouses in China, creating around two million square meters of floorspace, at a cost of $1.2 billion. That represents a cost of $600 a square meter, a figure the firm estimates will rise 6 percent each year to hit around $1,357 in 2029.

Blackstone, Asia's largest private equity real estate investor, said it is in talks with several China real estate developers as it eyes the warehouse sector. Carlyle declined to comment.

 

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