MAB Corporation has bought a 32.57-hectare industrial site in Melbourne’s southeast and plans to develop the site into a $400 million industrial and logistics development. 

The property was located at 1568 and 1580A Thompsons Road in Cranbourne East – 45 kilometres southeast of Melbourne’s CBD. 

MAB expected the Cranbourne East site to offer 180,000 sqm of usable space when fully developed, expanding its overall industrial pipeline to more than 1,066ha. 

The site was positioned within the Croskell Precinct Structure Plan and featured 700 metres of road frontage at the Thompsons Road major intersection, providing a key entryway into the precinct. 

Land, Agribusiness, Water and Development (LAWD) Senior Director Peter Sagar negotiated the sale. 

“With assets of this nature in tight supply, we received strong interest from the market, including six registered offers, which enabled us to achieve an outstanding result for the vendor,” Sagar said. 

“The pandemic has caused some increased uncertainty in some of the traditional real estate asset classes over the past 24 months and as a result we have witnessed demand pivot to industrial and logistics assets at the development stage, which has been largely driven by the growth of e-commerce.” 

MAB General Manager – Commercial and Industrial Michael Martin said they had been actively growing their industrial pipeline in key markets to meet rising demand, in what continued to be an extremely competitive landscape. 

The sale is the latest development deal in Melbourne’s southeast, following Stockland’s purchase of a 13-hectare site on Thompsons Road in Clyde North for $47.5 million last month.  

Developer ID_Land bought three parcels of land spanning 59 hectares in Clyde for $140 million in February this year, expecting to 1,200 greenfield housing lots. 

In December last year, National Pacific Properties sold a town centre development site in Clyde to an interstate developer for $67.65 million. 

The Clyde major town centre site was a 26.23ha landholding at 1625 Ballarto Road and was likely to be a multi-supermarket shopping centre with surrounding supportive commercial and retail uses. 

In wider Melbourne, Chinese developer Hengmao divested a site with approved plans for a 12-level mixed-use project in Maribyrnong last month, while developer Time & Place and Corsair Investment Management bought a site in Alphington for about $48 million to develop a $500 million mixed-use precinct in March.