Horsley Park CSR land sells for $142m
A 160-year-old brick business has made an eyewatering windfall profit after the Western Sydney Airport caused surrounding land to surge in value.
Fairfield
Don't miss out on the headlines from Fairfield. Followed categories will be added to My News.
CSR Limited, a 160-year-old manufacturer of construction materials including PGH Bricks, has sold 20 hectares of its Horsley Park land for $142.5 million.
The sale — of land located within the industrial zone of Western Sydney Airport, at 327-335 Burley Rd — comes after the business sold 10 hectares last year for $58m.
The 30 hectares of land offloaded by CSR has been ‘surplus’. The business still owns another 20 hectares where its brick manufacturing facility operates — for now, at least.
The buyer is ESR, a logistics and warehousing business of no relation, prominent across the Asia-Pacific.
ESR will build four-to-six distribution houses on the property, the company’s chief executive Phil Pearce said.
“Since establishing our business in Australia last year, we’ve been focused on building a strong foundation on which we can grow in this market,” he said.
“With the addition of these recent land acquisitions to our existing land bank, we are well positioned to … (develop) premium logistics properties in high demand low-supply locations for our customers.”
A spokeswoman for CSR declined to comment.
The advent of Western Sydney Airport has seen investment pour into Horsley Park. The land sold by CSR falls within the airport’s industrial zone, is close to the M4 and M7 motorways, and is bolstered by large infrastructure projects, including WestConnex, Sydney Metro and Moorebank Intermodal.
CSR has netted a combined $200m by selling 30 hectares of land in Horsley Park over the last two years — and the company continues to explore additional real estate deals.
It has filed paperwork to demolish the PGH Bricks manufacturing plant on its remaining 20-hectare property in Horsley Park. This land has been subdivided into eight independent properties and can be sold off in parcels, rather than being sold off in one lot.
Another nearby PGH Bricks plant could be sold off for the land it stands on, too.
CSR owns and operates PGH Bricks & Pavers in Cecil Park, one of two semirural suburbs being redeveloped to feature thousands of homes.
But the future of this plant is also in question, as Fairfield Council announced the site will become the town centre of a redeveloped Cecil Park in the years to come.