Ivanhoé Cambridge has completed the acquisition of U.S.-based light industrial specialist Evergreen Industrial Properties from TPG Real Estate.

Ivanhoé Cambridge has acquired Evergreen Industrial Properties from TPG Real Estate. (CNW Group/Ivanhoé Cambridge)

A person familiar with the transaction told the Globe and Mail the purchase price was approximately $1 billion US.

Evergreen owns and operates a portfolio of more than 150 properties, comprising approximately 16 million square feet in 18 major markets.

In addition to high-growth markets such as Seattle, Denver, and Charlotte, the company has a significant presence in major distribution markets including Atlanta, Chicago and Dallas. 

Offers strategic infill locations 

Its facilities offer strategic infill locations to distribution, e-commerce and light manufacturing customers.

“We are very enthusiastic about this acquisition. We started looking at companies in the industrial real estate sector over two years ago with the intention of making a strategic investment in this asset class,” Arthur Lloyd, president, Office North America, at Ivanhoé Cambridge, said in a release issued Friday morning.

“Industrial real estate offers an attractive current return and good diversification for our office portfolio in terms of underlying economic drivers.

“We continue to look for opportunities as we plan to grow our industrial business in the years to come.”

Evergreen focuses on infill, multi-tenant assets of under 250,000 square feet in locations well-positioned to serve “last-mile” users in growing metropolitan centres. TPG Real Estate created Evergreen in 2014, seeding the platform with a 7.5 million- square=foot portfolio acquisition.

Through 11 further acquisitions, Evergreen then acquired an additional 127 properties in 18 targeted markets.

“In creating Evergreen, we saw an opportunity to build a platform that was positioned to benefit from a dynamic sector shift to last-mile and infill locations by light industrial and e-commerce users,” said Avi Banyasz, partner and co-head of TPG Real Estate.

About Ivanhoe, TPG

Ivanhoé Cambridge is a global real estate industry leader founded in Quebec in 1953. Through subsidiaries and partnerships, Ivanhoé Cambridge holds interests in nearly 800 buildings, primarily in the residential, office, retail and logistics real estate sectors. Ivanhoé Cambridge holds approximately $56 billion Cdn in assets.

The company is a real estate subsidiary of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, one of Canada’s leading institutional fund managers.

TPG Real Estate is the real estate platform of TPG, a global private investment firm with more than $73 billion of assets under management and 16 offices around the world.

TPGRE includes TPG Real Estate Partners, its equity investment platform, and TPG Real Estate Finance Trust, its debt origination and acquisition platform. TPGRE manages more than $5 billion in assets across both platforms.