Tritax Big Box REIT has confirmed it has completed an 1 million-square-foot prelet, one of the UK's largest, in a strong trading update for the year to end of December 2024.
Tritax reported £11.1 million of contracted rent secured, including the massive prelet to an undisclosed "global leader in e-commerce".
It declined to name the occupier but CoStar News revealed in December that Amazon was looking to strike a deal for the major distribution hub in Kettering next to the A14. Plans for the scheme show the 04 Unit has the capacity to accommodate around 1.1 million square feet. Symmetry Park Kettering is 136 acres and has outline planning permission for 2.3 million square feet of logistics space.
In the update, Tritax said it had secured £306.2 million of disposals and added an additional £22.7 million of contracted rent.
The year saw an £8.4 million increase in contracted rent from rent reviews, an average 11.7% increase in passing rent, and a 34.6% increase across all open market reviews. There was a £3.2 million increase in contracted rent from other asset management initiatives, 15.9% ahead of previous passing rent.
The real estate investment trust added there had been a 5.4% like-for-like portfolio estimated rental value growth during full year 2024, reflecting "favourable supply/demand" dynamics.
Tritax reported 1.9 million square feet of development starts in 2024, including 400,000 square feet which has been pre-sold.
The REIT secured 1.2 million square feet of planning consents in the period and a submitted another 11.1 million square feet submitted. It has 5.3 million square feet of current planning consented land available for development.
Shortly after the period-end, it announced a first major data centre development opportunity and data centre pipeline, as reported.
Tritax's total portfolio value as at 31 December 2024 was £6.5 billion, against £5 billion at 31 December 2023. There is 3.3% underlying vacancy, with another 2.4% from speculative developments completed in November to give 5.7% (31 December 2023: 2.5%) with the potential to add additional rent of £21.5 million a year.
Colin Godfrey, CEO for Tritax Big Box, said in a statement: “We are delivering and enhancing performance across all aspects of our business as we make excellent progress implementing our strategy. In line with guidance, we saw an uptick in activity in H2 2024, most notably securing one of the UK’s largest prelets of the year of nearly 1 million square feet to a global leader in ecommerce. Strong development activity complements the active management of our portfolio, including the successful integration of UKCM assets.
“We enter 2025 with growing confidence, driven by improving occupational market conditions, our expanded range of growth drivers – which now include highly accretive data centre developments – and enabled by ongoing investment in our high-calibre team, dedicated to achieving continued success for Tritax Big Box.”