Big Grade A sheds in short supply – report

LARGE scale Grade A industrial and logistics space in the North West may run out by early 2016.

Research by Colliers International reveals space of more than 100,000sq ft could disappear within the next nine months.

Although the  has sufficient supply of such premises to see it through the remainder of 2015 – compared for example with the West Midlands where such supply is due to expire in early July 2015 –  the increasing gap between supply and demand should not be underestimated, warned Colliers.

Julien Kenny-Levick, director, industrial and logistics at the Manchester office of Colliers, said: “Businesses seeking Grade A big sheds in excess of 100,000sq ft in the North West face a potentially very unhappy new year.

“While new stock is feeding through with developers on site to build speculatively and others seeking funders so they can start work, the amount of available and ready to occupy space needs to be much more to meet demand.

“The state of the market therefore remains worrying and quite stark for potential occupiers and there’s little evidence of the picture changing markedly in the next nine months.”

At the end of the first quarter of 2015, there was an overall total of nine, 982,100 sq ft of large industrial accommodation including Grade A sites available in the North West, down by 147,890 sq ft from 10,130,000 sq ft in the second half of 2014.

The amount of large Grade A available space within the overall total for the North West is 856,707 sq ft – down from some 1.3mi sq ft a year ago – and equating to approximately nine months of supply for the region.

Kenny-Levick added: “Throughout the past five years in the North West and elsewhere in the UK we have seen little new development within the big shed arena and most of the deals have been secondary stock.”