Blackstone speeds last mile with Coopers Plains purchase

Blackstone Head of Real Estate Australia Chris Tynan

Private equity and real estate giant Blackstone is doubling down in its last mile logistics, picking up the Arcadia Industrial Estate in Coopers Plains in Brisbane’s south for about $89m.

The company will add the estate on Boundary Road to its holdings and look to benefit from its location between Brisbane’s major arterial roads and the rail yard.

The industrial estate has a range of warehouse and office spaces and is on the northern side of Boundary Road, with easy access to major arterials including the Logan and Ipswich motorways via Ipswich and Beaudesert roads.

The estate has strong consumer reach and there is a population of about 2.1 million people within a 45-minute drive with $121.2bn in purchasing power and a $589.2m online shopping spend.

The asset was sold by Jason Edge and Matthew Frazer-Ryan from CBRE on behalf of a Goodman Group-managed partnership.

The estate, which comprises about 40,000sq m of gross lettable area, is in a strategic location for Blackstone given surrounding land constraints and its proximity to residential areas

The asset was purchased as part of Blackstone’s last mile logistics strategy which is gaining momentum as it rebuilds after selling off the Milestone Logistics portfolio.

In July 2024 Blackstone swooped on a Queensland last mile logistics asset that was sold by the Dexus Wholesale Property Fund in a play worth just over $50m.

The group has signalled its desire to grow in smaller facilities that can cater to e-commerce tenants, and has been building up its holdings after selling off its $3.8bn Milestone Logistics property portfolio in 2021.

Blackstone has focused on under-the-radar purchases that allow it to pursue value-add strategies, and it is scooping up properties off market.

The business park had been in the sights of Growthpoint’s funds arm, which had planned to launch a new industrial trust to acquire the site on the doorstep of Brisbane Airport.

Blackstone last year also picked up a site in the Sydney suburb of Kingsgrove from a Charter Hall wholesale partnership for $57.5m.

It bought 133 Vanessa Street from a wholesale partnership that the local company has with Dutch institutional investor PGGM as it looks to capitalise on rising industrial rents.