Big shed report claims NW has only 1.3 years of Grade A supply

According to the latest Savills Big Shed Briefing, The North West has only 1.3 years left of grade A industrial space, despite an increase in the number of Grade A quality units in the region.

While Grade A stock now accounts for 42% of all vacant units, up from 30% a year ago, based on the long-term average take-up of quality space, the supply in the North West will last less than 18 months.

Furthermore, occupiers looking for larger units will find only five units over 300,000 sq ft across all grades available in the region, with the only completed spec unit being the 375,000 sq ft unit at Logistics North, Bolton.

For 2018, take-up of industrial space (over 100,000 sq ft) reached 4.58 million sq ft across 23 separate transactions, representing a 63% rise on 2017 and a 26% increase on the long-term average resulting in a record year for the region.

Following UK wide trends, Savills notes that take-up was dominated by smaller size bands of 100,000-200,000 sq ft which accounted for 70% of the market deal count.

The largest deal of the year was Movianto acquiring 373,000 sq ft at Haydock Green in Saint Helens.

With regards to the development pipeline, there are currently seven units being developed totalling 1.55 million sq ft.

The largest is 525 Haydock in Saint Helens, set to reach practical completion in the second quarter of this year.

Despite current underlying uncertainty the outlook for the year ahead is positive, and take-up for 2019 is expected to exceed the long-term average of 3.65 million sq ft.

Jon Atherton, industrial and logistics director at Savills, said: “After a quieter 2017 the North West has bounced back to report a record year, and we expect 2019 to continue this trend.”