Sentinel’s Wishart Buy – Leading Property Investor Sticks with Darwin
January 4, 2022
SENTINEL Property Group has continued its Darwin commercial real estate expansion with the purchase of a fully-leased cold storage facility at the Wishart industrial precinct.
Fully leased by national tenants including ASX-listed poultry processing company Ingham’s Group, Sentinel snapped up the facility for a cool $7.4m.
Strategically positioned in a key industrial precinct at McCarthy Cl, Wishart, the cold-store was sold by a private owner through Matthew Trim of Commercial Adelaide for a 9.03 per cent yield.
The asset includes two freestanding cold storage facilities of 2222 sqm on an 8700 sqm with strong weighted average lease expiry by income of 3.41 years. Income is underpinned by Ingham’s, which occupy 88 per cent of the total lettable area.
The Wishart facility is the first property to be owned by the Sentinel Northern Australia Investment Fund and is located close to the Stuart Hwy and within 6km of Darwin Port.
Sentinel chief executive Warren Ebert said the group had been highly active in Darwin in the past five years and was continually on the lookout for more acquisitions.
“We think the Northern Territory has an enormous couple of decades ahead of it with planned investments in the region of approximately $43bn, including the $22bn Australian-ASEAN Power Link Project, the $4.7bn Santos Barossa Gas Field project and $8bn in government defence infrastructure,” Mr Ebert said.
“By 2030, the NT government is aiming to achieve 30 per cent population growth and to boost its gross state product from $26bn to $40bn. The regional economy is really starting to take off and has received a huge boost
recently from Qantas launching direct flights between Darwin and London.
“The money that is going into Darwin and throughout the NT is absolutely enormous and long term.”
Already with one of the largest commercial property portfolios in Darwin, Sentinel has embarked on a $420m capital raising for the acquisition of the city’s Casuarina Square shopping centre from GPT Group.
Darwin properties already owned by Sentinel include 639 Stuart Hwy Berrimah, Arnhemica House at 16 Parap Rd, Jacana House at 39 Woods St in Darwin CBD and the Cascom Centre in Scaturchio St, Casuarina.
Established in 2010, Brisbane-based Sentinel has a national portfolio of more than 60 retail, industrial, office, land, tourism infrastructure and agribusiness assets with a total value in excess of $1.3bn.