Aethon Real Estate Acquires €3.6 Billion European Logistics Portfolio

Aethon Real Estate today announced the acquisition of a portfolio of 84 modern logistics and distribution facilities across Western Europe from a global institutional vendor, in a transaction valued at approximately €3.6 billion. The acquisition is one of the largest single European logistics transactions of the past three years and represents the cornerstone investment for Aethon Real Estate Partners Europe II.

The portfolio comprises approximately 14 million square feet of Grade-A logistics space across Germany (38%), the Netherlands (22%), France (20%), the United Kingdom (15%), and Belgium (5%). Average building age is under seven years, and the portfolio is 96% leased to a diversified base of e-commerce, retail, third-party logistics, and manufacturing tenants on long-dated leases with embedded inflation indexation.

"This acquisition reflects exactly the type of opportunity ARPE II was designed to capture," said Alexandra Fontaine, Managing Partner of Real Estate. "We are buying institutional-quality assets at meaningful discounts to replacement cost, in markets with constrained development pipelines and durable structural demand. The previous owner needed liquidity, and our scale and certainty of execution allowed us to acquire the entire portfolio in a single transaction."

The transaction was funded through a combination of equity from ARPE II and committed debt financing from a club of European banks and insurance company lenders. Pricing reflects a stabilized cap rate of approximately 6.1%, materially above the 4.5% peak achieved in 2021 and consistent with the broader repricing of European logistics over the past three years.

Aethon Real Estate will undertake a multi-year value-creation program across the portfolio, including selective ESG upgrades (rooftop solar, EV charging, BREEAM certification), targeted lease extensions, and intensification of underutilized sites with mezzanine and yard expansions.

Aethon Real Estate has now invested approximately €4.8 billion across European logistics since 2018 and is one of the largest institutional owner-operators of modern distribution real estate in the region.