(Finance) – In 2023 in Italy the logistics real estate sector was the one on which the largest real estate investments were concentrated, with over 1.7 billion euros, equal to 26 percent of the total. The Italian market has proven to be more active than other countries and a European scenario where logistics has had to face macroeconomic challengesand which have significantly affected the level of investments, down by 41% compared to the average level of the three-year period 2020-2022 but still higher than 33 billion euros. These are some of the data that emerged today in Milan during the conference “The energy of logistics – The future of the asset class between industry, technology and renewables” during which the “2024 report on the logistics real estate market in Europe and Italy“, curated by Scenari Immobiliari in collaboration, for the second consecutive year, with SFRE, a Project & Construction Management company, specialized in logistics and light-industrial properties.
“In Italy – he declared Francesca Zirnstein, general director of Scenari Immobiliari – logistics is a now consolidated market segment, both in terms of construction and type of investors. A result obtained thanks to the corresponding growth of the Contract logistics sector, which increased by twenty-five percent in five years. The actors are institutional investors, specialists, developers who are also investors and others. It should be clarified that the sector’s activity in 2023 slowed down compared to 2022, causing a decrease in volumes of 43%, not due to structural issues in the sector but above all due to financial and geopolitical uncertainty, with an Italian market that nevertheless proved to be more active than other European realities. The segment, in its various forms, has in fact expressed a mature demand for the various types of products, mainly located in northern Italy. Signs of improvement were evident from the second half of the year, with the last part of 2023 more dynamic than the July-September period and the previous twelve months. A trend supported mainly by the solidity of interest in the sector and by the pressure of demand for space in the main markets but also in complementary ones. NoDuring the fourth quarter of 2023, approximately 630 million euros in volumes were recorded“.
“The logistics asset – he commented Filippo Salis, CEO and founder of SFRE – reconfirms its strategic position in the market thanks to the sensitivity shown by the primary players towards sector developments and, in this historical moment, to the growing commitment reserved for the topic of energy transition. Renewable energies, in fact, are gradually becoming one of the dominant factors in the Logistics Real Estate sector and the result that emerges is that their use guarantees an entire value chain that is significantly more efficient and sustainable. Today more than ever, it is important to embrace innovative solutions such as hydrogen and photovoltaics to power logistics parks that are no longer perceived only as goods handling centers, but as real energy parks: buildings in which the production and exchange of clean energy become an integral part of everyone’s vision for a sustainable future. What if logistics were the true pioneer of true net carbon zero?”.
In 2023 the industrial-logistics sector had a turnover of around 5.5 billion in Italy, down more than five percent on an annual basis and with a slight contraction forecast for 2024. The production of real estate wealth depends for approximately one third on capital allocations in highly characterized properties and for approximately fifty percent on uses in warehouses and small surface areas, inserted in the productive fabric of each Italian province.
The real estate assets of the logistics market currently amount to over 48 million square meters, after developments closing on approximately two million square feet per year in 2022 and 2023. At the same time, estimates for 2024 foresee a pipeline of just under 1.5 million square meters.
In an inflationary scenario like that of 2023, the Italian logistics market developed and saw returns, which had reached their lowest point in 2022, grow between 30 and 50 basis points. Space is considered a fundamental element more than in the past, in order to be able to be a warehouse in the most positive sense of the term, collecting adequate stocks to cope with new interruptions in the supply process, limiting the repercussions due to increased costs, competing in speed of answer to the question.
In Italy, market demand in logistics is constantly growing, which translates into a take-up of approximately 690 thousand square meters recorded in the fourth quarter of 2023, substantially in line with that of the previous quarter, which led to over 1, The total volume transacted in the second half of 2023 was 3 million square metres. Today the demand for space is increasingly oriented towards efficient and sustainable assets which real estate operators are trying to satisfy with development projects exceeding two million square metres.
After the pandemic crisis, the real estate market for logistics properties in Italy is mature, supported the growth of 2021, faced the many risks of 2022 and the economic tightening and geopolitical situation of 2023, and started 2024 with a clear contraction of results compared to previous quarters but as the second best real estate asset class. The supply chain’s ability to adapt is confirmed by the weighted increase, compared to the sharp decline in previous years, in net returns at a national level, which stand at 5.8 percent, with even lower peaks for prime locations and trophy assets, between 4.8 and 5.7 percent and further reductions for last mile properties. The lowest rates are inevitably recorded on the prime marketsmainly located in the regions of northern Italy, with Milan and its gravitating territories in the lead, growing proportionally towards central and southern Italy, with Rome recording rates slightly higher than the Lombard capital.