OakNorth lends £29m to ALMCOR and Cerberus JV

Following its launch in 2022, the JV has €500m (£428.4m) of allocated capital to deploy in target markets across the UK and Europe. 

The facility from OakNorth will be used to support their acquisition of the 50-acre Leyland Business Park in Preston, Lancashire, and the 90-acre Melton Commercial Park in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, for their European Industrial Outdoor Storage (EIOS) platform.

The Leyland site, located less than a mile from the M6 and M65 motorways, consists of warehouse units, offices, and fully serviced sites ready for development.

Meanwhile, the Melton site is located less than two miles from Melton Mowbray town centre and benefits from two rail sidings, in addition to offering opportunities for redevelopment and energy generation.

As a result of this latest transaction, OakNorth has now lent £37m to the JV.

Peter McCluskey, head of active value at ALMCOR, commented: "These acquisitions provide an excellent snapshot into what we are doing in our EIOS platform.

“We're quickly developing a diverse income-producing portfolio with scope to drive value in a number of areas.”

David Lane, managing director at Cerberus, continued: “We’re delighted to welcome these two new major sites to our EIOS platform.

“We continue to value OakNorth’s approach to delivering structured debt funding and look forward to working with them again in the future.”

Deepesh Thakrar, senior director and Josh Mailling, senior associate of debt finance at OakNorth, added: “This is an excellent example of an asset that fits into Cerberus and ALMCOR’s investment strategy to acquire open storage assets with strong reversionary potential.

“Both sites are in highly sought-after locations with excellent connectivity, resulting in impressive occupancy rates, we anticipate they’ll be a successful addition to the EIOS platform.”