Acquisition of Mayflower Retail Park, Basildon
22 March 2011
British Land Acquires Mayflower Retail Park, Basildon for £51 million
The British Land Company PLC ("British Land") has purchased Mayflower Retail Park on the edge of Basildon town centre in Essex from Scottish Widows Investment Partnership ("Scottish Widows") for £51 million. The purchase price represents a net initial yield of 6.3%, rising to 6.9% upon letting of the park's one vacant unit, with significant opportunities to improve rental levels.
As part of the transaction, British Land will sell Valley Leisure Park, Croydon to Scottish Widows for a price of £28 million, representing a net initial yield of 7.1%. As a result, the net cash investment made by British Land will be £23 million.
Mayflower Retail Park comprises 11 retail units totalling 153,000 sq ft of Open A1 space serving a catchment population of over 300,000 people. Current retailers on the park include Homebase, Currys, Harveys, Mothercare and Next. The park is also situated adjacent to a Tesco superstore.
This transaction further adds to British Land's already dominant position as the largest manager of out of town retail parks and brings the total amount of retail acquisitions made by the group to almost £400 million since March 2010.
Valley Leisure Park, Croydon was acquired by British Land in 2000 for £21 million. The scheme comprises 135,000 sq ft of predominantly leisure accommodation, anchored by an 8 screen cinema.
Charles Maudsley, Head of Retail at British Land said: "This is another attractive acquisition for British Land which is in line with our strategy of recycling capital into assets with higher rental and value growth prospects. Mayflower is a popular trading location where rents are affordable and retailers trade well. By refreshing and modernising the park, we believe there are significant opportunities to attract new retailers to the scheme and grow rents. Along with Eastgate Shopping Centre in the heart of Basildon, we now own the town's two most dominant retail assets where we anticipate future growth."
Enquiries:
Investor Relations
Sally Jones, British Land 020 7467 2942
Media
Pip Wood, British Land 020 7467 2838
Guy Lamming, Finsbury Group/ 020 7251 3801
Gordon Simpson, Finsbury Group
Notes to Editors
About British Land
British Land is one of the UK's largest Real Estate Investment Trusts with total assets, owned or under management, valued at £14.5 billion (British Land share £9.3 billion), as at 31 December 2010. Our property portfolio is focused on high quality retail locations and central London offices which we believe are well placed to benefit from growing customer demand. We have among the highest occupancy rates and average lease lengths of the major UK REITs at 98.1% and 12.1 years respectively.
Retail assets account for 66% of our portfolio, around 80% of which are located at prime out-of-town sites. Our portfolio comprises over 26 million sq ft of retail space across 89 retail warehouse properties, 99 superstores, 12 shopping centres and 10 department stores. Our portfolio benefits from flexible planning consents making the portfolio adaptable to a wide range of formats. This allows us to actively manage our portfolio and deliver the most attractive space to both retailers and consumers.
Central London offices currently comprise 32% of the portfolio. Our portfolio comprises 6 million sq ft of office space and includes a 50% share in Broadgate, the premier office campus in the City and Regent's Place, an office estate in the West End. During 2010, we committed to a significant development programme in central London which, on the basis of current estimates of values at completion, increase the weighting of offices in the group's portfolio from 32% to nearly 40%. These developments, which will deliver 2.2 million sq ft of high quality space in the City and West End by 2014, include: a new 700,000 sq ft building for UBS at Broadgate; the 610,000 sq ft Leadenhall Building in London's insurance district; and the 500,000 sq ft NEQ building, which will complete the Regent's Place estate in the West End. The aggregate development cost, including land and interest is expected to be £1.5 billion, of which British Land's share is £1.0 billion.
Further details can be found on the British Land website at www.britishland.com
This information is provided by RNS