Kennards Self Storage buys Australia Post’s CBD mail centre
Wine connoisseurs, gun owners and others looking for somewhere to store their goods, will soon have a new option in the CBD following the $40.6 million sale of Australia Post’s letter sorting facility.
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Wine connoisseurs, gun owners and others looking for somewhere to store their goods, will soon have a new option in Adelaide following the $40.6 million sale of Australia Post’s letter sorting facility in the CBD.
Kennards Self Storage has acquired the Adelaide Mail Centre in the city’s west end, with plans to transform it into a vertical storage facility with additional office and retail space.
Following an 18-month leaseback to Australia Post, Kennards will repurpose the 24,000sqm building, while considering further development on the remainder of the near 1.8ha site.
Kennards chief executive Sam Kennard said the new facility would become the company’s eighth storage site in South Australia following its latest opening at Adelaide Airport last year.
He said the abolition of stamp duty on commercial property in SA was a key factor behind the purchase.
“Our business continues to look for opportunities in markets that aren’t currently served and the Adelaide CBD is one of those markets,” he said.
“The building will be storage and mixed-use - some commercial, some retail on the ground floor - because of the size of the building it’s a bit big for just self-storage so we have to be a bit creative and innovative. So there could be co-working or casual leasing.
“Another dimension of our business is enterprise spaces - warehouse spaces 50sqm to 100sqm - so we’ll put some of them in. Our message on those is no lease, no bond, no legals, so start-ups and new businesses would come into that.”
The Adelaide Mail Centre is located between Grote and Gouger streets, near West Terrace, and is one of the biggest development sites to ever be sold in the CBD.
In addition to general personal and business storage options, the new facility will also accommodate speciality goods including wine and guns.
“There’ll be wine storage in the basement, where we will have a climate controlled cellar, and we’ll also have gun storage - there are vaults in there that we will turn into legally compliant storage,” Mr Kennard said.
The Adelaide Mail Centre is currently used for sorting letters and the building is about one quarter occupied by staff.
Parcels, which have forged a new revenue stream for Australia Post in the wake of online shopping, are sorted and distributed from Wingfield.
Australia Post’s first-half profit slumped by 47 per cent to $58 million in the six months to December, with parcel volumes from China to Australia dropping in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.
The government-owned organisation confirmed its gradual move out of the Adelaide Mail Centre site, but declined to comment further on its future accommodation plans.
The sale of the Adelaide Mail Centre was brokered by Colliers International’s Alistair Mackie, Paul van Reesema and Justin Hazell.