insights
September 3, 2025
In pursuit of €4.5 billion of warehouses, it pays to have the right partners
Our partnership with AustralianSuper—Australia’s largest superannuation fund—positions us to deploy significant capital into a high-potential sector at the start of a new real estate cycle. Leveraging the track record of our portfolio company M7 gives us a distinct edge in this granular asset class.
At Oxford, we believe that success in real estate often hinges on finding the right partners.
When it comes to sourcing the best deals, local knowledge can go a long way. Similarly, there are times when it makes sense to invest a significant amount of capital in a short period; when pricing is attractive, for example. Finding partners that share our goals enable us to capitalize when it matters the most.
Our strategic partnership with AustralianSuper, Australia’s largest superannuation fund, encapsulates this approach. In January, the firm acquired a 50% stake in our €840 million European industrial and logistics portfolio, which is managed by M7, the European investment and asset management business that we acquired in 2021.
“Given that values corrected quite a lot, it made sense to bring in a well-capitalized, like-minded partner,” says Alicia Peters, Vice President, Industrial & Logistics at Oxford . “We think this is the time to acquire assets and we’re entering this next phase of the real estate cycle with significant capital to deploy.”
The portfolio currently comprises 76 high-quality urban logistics and distribution warehouses spanning about 730,000 square meters (sqm). The properties are well located in 19 of the most strategic urban ‘last mile’ and distribution hubs, including the UK, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. Together, we aim to grow the venture to €4.5 billion during the coming three to five years.
M7 will play a vital role in that process. Urban logistics and distribution is among the hottest sectors in real estate; the rapid expansion of e-commerce and ‘near-shoring’ has fueled demand for warehouses within easy reach of customers. At the same time, a shortage of land in urban locations means that occupiers are competing for a limited supply of properties, which is underpinning rental growth.
However, investing can be challenging for global firms. Unlike trophy offices in prime city-center locations, these properties are often found in little-known suburbs. They also tend to have multiple occupiers – our portfolio already has more than 200 tenants – which can make them intensive to manage.
Our acquisition of M7 turned those challenges into advantages, says James Boadle, Senior Vice President, Europe, at Oxford. The team knows the customers, properties and locations, allowing them to extract maximum value from the portfolio.
Meanwhile, the diversity of tenants strengthens income security; no single customer represents more than 5% of total rent.
“M7 gives us a competitive advantage in a space that is naturally quite granular,” James explains. “They have boots on the ground, and they have this ability to drive value over and above what's in the tenancy schedule. That’s been critical to our success so far.”
The experience of the M7’s senior leadership team, many of whom have worked together for decades, compounds those advantages, Alicia adds.
“They are really connected to the local broker networks, the local tenant networks, and are able to source opportunities off market,” she says. “We’re securing deals that aren't being fully marketed – they are presented to M7 on a one-to-one basis.”
This is a tried and tested model that suits modern global real estate investing. Acquisitions of entire platforms enable Oxford to build the kind of scale that would take years through individual property purchases. In 2020, we purchased a 50% interest in Investa Office Management Holdings to bolster our on-the-ground property and asset management capabilities in Australia. A year earlier, we purchased a half stake in the US warehouse developer IDI Logistics. Ivanhoe Cambridge owns the other half of the 52-million-square-foot portfolio.
“A lot of this comes down to the flexibility of our capital,” James concludes. “In the case of M7, we saw an opportunity at the more granular end of the supply chain - one that required a more hands-on approach than our European business was set up for. That led us to decide that the best execution method was to acquire the M7 platform, creating synergies between our balance sheet, global logistics experience and in-house team, with the capability and infrastructure of M7. The introduction of AustralianSuper is an expansion of Oxford’s blue-chip roster of global institutional partners and a key milestone in our European strategy as we look to significant grow this venture, alongside our other indirect and direct drive strategies.”
Transcript
Narrator: At Oxford, we know the value of partnerships. In a competitive market, local expertise matters. The ability to source the best deals, understand customers, and unlock value at every level. That's why in 2021, Oxford acquired M7 Real Estate.
Alicia Peters: The M7 platform adds to Oxford's competitive edge in that it provides us with the toolkit to be able to invest in pan-European logistics assets, which are more urban and granular in nature.
David Ebbrell: M7 itself is a pan-European manager of multi-tenanted real estate. We've kind of evolved a lot over the last 15 years, especially over the last three years of our partnership together with Oxford.
Alicia Peters: They also have deep in-country teams in each of our target markets, which give us the ability to directly asset manage, lease, and source investment opportunities across the continent and the UK.
Narrator: With M7's on the ground expertise and deep tenant relationships, Oxford can act with agility in a complex and fragmented market. To scale this strategy further, Oxford needed a partner with long-term capital and a shared investment philosophy. Enter AustralianSuper.
Matt Fidge: We're delighted to partner with the Oxford and M7 teams. We believe urban logistics and distribution represents one of the most compelling sector opportunities in European real estate today.
James Boadle: Oxford has significant conviction in the sector, and ambition to grow to €4.5 billion over the next 3 to 5 years. The key to that success into the next cycle is stock selection. We remain disciplined around our investment criteria and really focused on quality as we continue to grow.
Alicia Peters: Securing this partnership with AustralianSuper provides us with the flexibility to look at investment opportunities across ticket sizes. We will continue to look at single asset strategies as well as pan-European portfolios of scale, allowing us to be nimble and pursue opportunities where there's less competition.
Narrator: The European logistics sector remains highly competitive, but Oxford sees opportunity amid changing market conditions.
Alicia Peters: With an increasingly competitive market - we actually view this positively. In that investors and owners of real estate who have assets they'd like to sell have largely been sitting on the sidelines waiting for greater market evidence and greater transaction volumes before they become comfortable putting more product in the market.
David Ebbrell: Our views are very positive in terms of our outlook from the European logistics sector. It all starts with the occupier base, and that's where M7's platform really helps us get that deep insight in terms of those occupier trends.
Alicia Peters: While we're focused on growth, we're not looking to scale just for scale's sake, and we're going to be very prudent on the types of opportunities that we pursue going forward.
James Boadle: It's a compelling point in the cycle to go on the offense and set the partnership up for opportunities that we think will present themselves.
David Ebbrell: What makes a good partner is trust and transparency, and that's what I've seen with Oxford.
Narrator: This is a tried and tested model that suits modern global real estate investing. As European logistics shapes up for an exciting future, it pays to have the right partners.