Northshore Group takes on the bigger corporates and secures TJM in turnkey Brendale sale

Northshore Group has preferred to remain a small but agile player in the Brisbane industrial sector while nothing up strong sales and accumulating a growing portfolio.

Northshore Group's Angus Campbell and Nick Witheriff at the company’s Eagle Farm office. (AAP/Image Sarah Marshall)

BEING a small and agile business in the land of industrial heavyweights suits Northshore Group managing director Angus Campbell.

Over the past nine years, Northshore Group has built up a strong industrial portfolio based in the TradeCoast precinct but also has property in Eagle Farm, Lytton and Geebung.

The company has recently also focused on Brendale and struck a $19.3 million turnkey deal for a state-of the-art Australian headquarters with manufacturer and distributor of 4x4 equipment TJM, owned by Thailand-based family-owned company Aeroklas.

In the process Northshore beat some of the industrial sector’s heavyweights to the punch.

“We were $3 million more cost effective across the whole deal than our nearest competition,” Mr Campbell said. “And the reason for that is the Northshore Group is a small, agile business that can move fast, without the big overheads that some of the more corporate players have.”

The initial deal was struck by Northshore property consultant Nick Witheriff, who was at CBRE at the time.

“Northshore Group was also able to offer the owners of TJM freehold and show them the freight logistic advantages of being there,” he said.

Designed by Sparc and built by Niclin Group under the guidance of Robert Alpe, the 13,000sq m office/warehouse is on 2.6ha of land at 17 Johnstone Rd. The company will take full control of the building in May.

It is in the Northshore Logistics Park, where the group has 2ha of development land next to TJM’s headquarters.

Mr Campbell said the sale was unusual for Northshore.

“We’re value-add investors and usually long-term owners. I like to think we’re generational investors and our kids will benefit from the assets we accumulate,” he said.

“We are also TradeCoast centric but we’re up in Brendale because there is demand for bigger lots and tenants are looking to move from places like Geebung because of traffic congestion.”

Mr Campbell said a feature of the current industrial market has been the number of southern businesses establishing themselves in Queensland.

“What we’ve been seeing in the last 12 months is Queensland businesses having flat or negative growth while businesses in Sydney and Melbourne are trading really well,” he said.

“They’ve had good year-on-year growth and are looking for opportunities to come up to Queensland. When they do they are undercutting the locals to get a foothold here.

“We bought a 4ha site in Pritchard St, Lytton, earlier this year and we found 60 per cent of tenants in that industrial estate came from Melbourne and had no previous presence up here.”