The joint venture bought Lokabox and its portfolio of six facilities across Belgium
A joint venture of Safestore and The Carlyle Group has acquired the six-store portfolio of Belgian self-storage provider Lokabox.
Out of these properties, two are situated at prime locations in Brussels, two are in Liege, and one each at Charleroi and Nivelles, with a total rentable space of nearly 20,600 square meters (about 222,000 square feet).
The financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
The Carlyle Group has an 80 per cent stake in the joint venture through Carlyle Europe Realty, a €540 million ($605 million) pan-European real estate fund. Safestore will hold the balance.
Safestore is the UK’s largest self-storage provider, with 126 locations across the country.
Outside of the UK, Safestore has 28 locations in Paris and 4 in Barcelona.
A Carlyle spokesperson told Commercial Property Executive that it has not yet been decided whether the six Belgian properties will operate under the Lokabox name or rebrand to Safestore.
According to the joint venture, the Belgian self-storage market is Europe’s seventh largest, which includes 90 stores and 2.2 million square feet of rentable space.
The partners intend to expand their platform by investing in further self-storage development and acquisition opportunities across Europe.
The joint venture was established in August 2019, and purchased M3 Self Storage in the Netherlands. M3’s six locations total about 277,000 square feet of rentable space.
According to a 2019 annual survey by the Federation of European Self Storage Associations, the European self-storage market includes 4,300 facilities with a total rentable space of over 9.9 million square meters (106.6 million square feet).
Interest in the self-storage sector has been growing and is characterized by an increasingly varied set of investors, said Ollie Saunders of JLL, which assisted with the survey.
Last December, LG Electronics USA agreed to lease the entire 925,000-square-foot industrial building in Franklin, N.J., once it was completed in the first quarter of this year. The building was being developed by Crow Holdings Industrial, in conjunction with The Carlyle Group.
