abrdn’s Airport Industrial Property Unit Trust (AIPUT) fund has submitted a planning application for the redevelopment of two adjacent warehouse units at its London Heathrow Radius Park campus, which will be financed under the £350m sustainability-linked credit facility it recently secured with Wells Fargo Bank.
The two units, which will be marketed as RP6, will be stripped back to the frame and re-clad to create a single 67,000 sq ft warehouse. The project has been designed to achieve carbon neutrality, both in terms of embedded carbon and operational performance.
The concrete floor slab and the majority of the existing structural steelwork is being retained and building materials will, wherever possible, be locally sourced using maximised recycled and recyclable content, aiming for nil waste to landfill. The building is expected to achieve EPC A and a minimum BREEAM Excellent rating.
Nick Smith, AIPUT fund manager, said: “As a market leader in critical airport logistics supply chain infrastructure, it is both essential and always motivating, to keep pushing the responsible investment envelope to benefit a wide range of stakeholders. Our proposed investment in this renovation project will create a market-leading warehouse facility to match rising occupier demand, whilst setting a new sustainable design bar for others to follow.
“We are focused on deploying this facility, combined with abrdn’s market leading investment expertise and operating platform, to execute our responsible investment strategy at both scale and pace, forming a critical pathway for AIPUT to achieve its decarbonisation objectives. The Radius Park project will deliver a key milestone on our strategic pathway to net zero.”
The facility with Wells Fargo Bank includes a number of customised sustainability-linked KPIs which AIPUT says will help it “deliver smarter energy-efficient buildings that attract and retain responsibly-focused tenants and their staff, improving the quality of the built environment with new features that reduce operational costs and environmental impacts, making better use of the planet’s scarce resources”.
AIPUT’s principal advisers on the planning application are PRC Planning and Northland. Subject to planning, the new warehouse will be built speculatively.
