CentralHub Industrial Centers, Inc. (CICI), the industrial warehouse space leasing subsidiary of DoubleDragon Properties Corp., has acquired the third site for its industrial warehouse complex, located in Danao, Cebu in the Central Visays region of the Philippines.
CentralHub-Cebu will have an initial area of 5.2 hectares with a capacity of 27,212 square meters of industrial warehouse space, DoubleDragon said in a statement. This will be the second major hub of CentralHub in the Visayas region after recently acquiring CentralHub-Iloilo.
A total of 15.3 hectares of prime industrial land with a total capacity of 81,219 square meters of industrial warehouse leasable space has been acquired by CentralHub to date. This includes its pilot development, CentralHub-Tarlac, whose first phase has been completed and turned over to its commissary tenant.
DoubleDragon envisions CentralHub to become the leading provider of industrial warehouses in the Philippines through the development of its first eight CentralHub sites by 2020, two of which will be located in North Luzon including CentralHub-Tarlac, two in South Luzon, two in Visayas (CentralHub-Iloilo and CentralHub-Cebu), and two in Mindanao.
These eight CentralHub locations are projected to have a total capacity of up to 400,000 square meters of leasable warehouse space. Each hub will contain modern standardized multi-use warehouses suited for commissaries, cold storage, light manufacturing, and logistic distribution centers.
DoubleDragon aims to have at least 100,000 square meters of leasable industrial warehouse space spread across the eight CentralHub sites by 2020. The real estate developer said CentralHub is expected to play a larger role in the group’s expansion plans for 2020 and beyond.As e-commerce continues to gradually disrupt the retail industry in the Philippines, DoubleDragon expects that two of its subsidiaries—CICI and CityMall—will greatly benefit from this inevitable transition.
CentralHub will cater to the rising demand for industrial warehouse space from logistics, commissary, cold storage, distribution, manufacturing, consumer-related and e-commerce companies.
CityMall, on the other hand, is strategically provincial only and focused solely on basic necessities, with two-thirds of its leasable space occupied by food and service tenants. CityMall is a platform for modern retail players to continue their growth into new markets, providing its modern retail tenants a way to prepare, position, and manage the expected effects of e-commerce disruption mainly in tier-1 cities.
“At the current pace of DoubleDragon’s developments that come on-stream and operational, at almost one project completion per week, this naturally translates to a substantial build-up of quality recurring revenue cash flow for the company,” DoubleDragon chairman Edgar Sia II said.
“We are very enthusiastic over the distinct potential of CentralHub industrial complexes. Just in the pilot phase of CentralHub-Tarlac, it is already achieving double-digit yields which we expect will further strengthen as CentralHub scale up in number of warehouses. CentralHub is expected to be a major contributor to our growth especially beyond 2020. In addition to the rental income, the company is also able to capitalize on the long-term value appreciation of its prime hard assets,” DoubleDragon chief investment officer Hannah Yulo said.
