Construction BUSINESS

Greenman Investments, a Dublin-headquartered firm that specialises in buying German retail assets, has paid €95 million for a portfolio of 29 stores from Edeka, Germany’s largest grocer, which has 26 per cent of the German market.
John Wilkinson, the managing director of Greenman, said the sale and leaseback deal brings the total value of German retail assets under Greenman’s control to €270 million.
Greenman is in “acquisition mode” and is planning to almost double its holding of German retail assets to €500 million by “this time next year”, Mr Wilkinson said.
Greenman is currently in talks with Edeka, which has 11,000 stores and sales of about €50 billion, to buy a further portfolio of stores in a sale and leaseback that it expects to complete by the end of October.
The Edeka acquisition was completed using a vehicle Greenman has set up in partnership with German commercial property company WCM. The German company has an option to purchase a majority of the joint venture.
“WCM and Greenman are currently reviewing potential for more joint investments,” the companies said.
Most of the properties are in the regions of Saxony-Anhalt and Lower Saxony. A further five are spread across North Rhine-Westphalia and Berlin.
Separate to the joint venture with WCM, Greenman also operates four funds that invest in German retail assets. One of those funds recently paid almost €19 million for a retail development in Stralsund, a town on the Baltic coast.
Mr Wilkinson said one of the funds, which are financed by about 1,500 mostly Irish investors, is close to closing another €22 million deal for a property near Dortmund.
Greenman will manage all of the properties in its funds, and also the properties it owns directly via its joint venture with WCM.
The company has about 10 staff at its headquarters on Dublin’s Baggot Street, with more staff based at an office in Berlin.
Mr Wilksinon, a veteran investor in German food retailing assets, said the company hopes to grow staff numbers as its portfolio increases.
Greenman specialises in buying Fachmarktzentrum, German neighbourhood shopping centres that are usually anchored by a food retailer such as Lidl or Aldi. Its funds seek out returns of about 8 per cent.
The company said on Wednesday it is a “true believer in the attractiveness and positive outlook for Fachmarktzentren as an asset class”