£250m manufacturing complex set for former Rolls-Royce site
A £250m, 200-acre manufacturing hub is set to be developed on the site of a former Rolls-Royce maintenance depot in Coventry in one of the biggest industrial schemes announced in the UK for several years.
Rolls-Royce is partnering with Manse and Opus Land to develop the project on a site close to Ansty Park.
The partnership intends to collaborate on a final scheme, ready for the submission of a planning application.
There are no details yet on who potential tenants might be, but it is thought the scheme will be capable of supporting thousands of jobs and provide a massive boost to the economy of both Coventry and the wider West Midlands and Warwickshire.
In terms of the West Midlands, the investment is on a par with the expansion of Jaguar Land Rover and the development – also on Ansty Park – of the London Electric Vehicle Company’s (formerly London Taxi Company) £325m factory.
JLL and Knight Frank have been appointed as joint agents for the development, dubbed Prospero Ansty, and both are marketing the scheme Europe-wide, as well as to potential investors in the UK.
It is thought the ultimate plan for the partnership is to sell the site on to large institutional investor once it is complete.
Palmer Capital, which part owns both Manse and Opus Land, said news about the launch of Prospero, Ansty had ignited social media, generating more responses on its Twitter feed than any other deal in which the companies have been involved.
It is confident that demand for the new site will be strong because of the current of shortage of quality space for manufacturing development.
Richard Smith, managing partner at Opus Land, said the resurgence of Jaguar Land Rover continue to drive demand for quality manufacturing space, which was totally different to the need for big sheds in the logistics sector.
Prospero is situated to the south of Ansty Park, the 1.5m sq ft technology hub that in addition to LEVC is home to a new factory for robotics firm Fanuc and is anchored by the Manufacturing Technology Centre.
Rolls-Royce closed its facility at the site in 2013 when stringent cutbacks in the UK defence budget saw the scrapping of the Harrier jump jet programme and other projects carried out at the depot. The closure saw the loss of almost 400 jobs.
Since then, the land has been surplus to requirements and had been marketed for development although nothing had progressed until now.
