Locating Poland's logistics hub
Indeed, two locations in particular will soon be jockeying for position as the logistics hub: Piotrków Trybunalski, which lies on the road between the capital and Katowice, and Stryków near Łódż. In both these areas are crucial new developments whose representatives will give frank views on the relative merits of their own location and the competing project's.
"The majority of the clients I'm working with now have requirements outside Warsaw," says Sev Zakrewski of Jones Lang LaSalle's Industrial and Logistics Agency. "The Piotrków and Łódż regions, and mainly the former, are where you have your massive requirements of 20,000 square meters and above." The days when his work consisted solely of representing clients who only wanted access to the Warsaw region are fading fast.
One of the main reasons for this shift is, of course, Poland's position in the heart of Europe and the access it provides to markets further East. In the Piotrków area, for example, IKEA has built a 100,000 square meter roadside warehouse to service both Central Europe and Russia, while ProLogis has constructed a build-to-suit project for Unilever further up the road, as well as another for Ahold. Stryków too has attracted consumer goods companies: the Casino Group, (which operates the Geant and Leader Price hypermarkets), Carrefour and Gravelo. But only one region can be a hub, and with Poland's EU accession, both Piotrków and Stryków will be making conflictingly louder claims to be exactly that in the coming months.
Two of their bravest crusaders are Grontmij Real Estate Polska, which together with ING Real Estate, is to build a 66-hectare logistics park (with a targeted 300,000 square meters) in Stryków, and Poland Central, a Polish-British-American initiative, which along with the UK-based Ansbacher merchant bank, plans to construct a park on a 122-hectare plot near Piotrków, just opposite IKEA's warehouse.
Although with logistics location is everything, in Poland, the quality of transport infrastructure comes a close, complicating second. According to Jan Chudzyński, a consultant for Poland Central, Stryków's claim to be the potential logistics center of Poland is fine, "but not until the motorways come in." The plan is to build a junction at the A2 and A1 roads near the town, and this is integral to the whole area's appeal as a logistics center. In Chudzyński's view, however, we shouldn't hold our breath for this to happen. "How long does it take for Poland to construct an underground railway station? It's a station a year. I can't see the North-South road from Gdańsk to Cieszyn being built for twenty years, and as for the East-West, perhaps by 2015." IKEA's decision to choose Piotrków, in his opinion, was because if they'd gone to Stryków, they would have found themselves having to drive "their lorries through Łódż, which would take one and a half hours," and with Poland also having to adapt to new haulage regulations in the new Europe, the prospect was not a happy one.
Błażej Ciesieluak of Grontmij lends a more optimistic slant to the shape of things to come in and around Stryków. While he accepts that the prospects for the A1's realization lie some way off in the future, the A2 will be on the map in two years' time at the most. "There is no discussion," any longer, he argues and insists that construction over "twenty-two months" of the stretch from Konin to Stryków is not an issue any more. "The tender process is already underway," he says and is confident that the road will be taking traffic in 2006. "We've spoken with the voiovoidship and saw that the tenders were announced in the newspapers and on government websites."
Adding that the construction companies interested in the project include notables such as Strabag, NCC and others, he maintains that: "The building permit is there and they [the authorities] have finance from the EU. In 15 days time, you will see who will construct which section [of the motorway]." When comparing Stryków and Piotrków, he says: "Stryków is of course the best location because it's near a junction, whereas Piotrkow is around forty kilometers from its nearest. From today's point of view, perhaps, Piotrków is the most interesting area, but two or three years from now Stryków would have to be." More specifically, he has doubts about Poland Central's project, saying of the current plot that "there are only trees" at the moment and that "the first warehouse will appear there in two years time."
The further logistics moves away from the capital city, the bigger the warehouses get and, of course, the more difficult they get to fill, particularly in a market heavily weighed in favour of tenants. Both of the areas under discussion, are arguably 'build-to-suit regions' where, according to Sev Zakrewski, developers "don't build speculatively, because of the sheer size and speciality of the requirements." As far as the Grontmij/ING Real estate project in Stryków is concerned, Błażej Ciesieluak insists that his people "aren't thinking about speculative buildings, because this is strictly a region for big boxes." Poland Central, however, doesn't see things in such black and white terms.
"Unless you know what you're doing," acknowledges Jan Chudzyński, "speculative developments can be a disaster." But although he recognizes the pitfalls, this doesn't mean Poland Central will rule out taking some chances in Piotrków. The point is, in actual fact, that you're taking risks whichever road you choose, because if you decide upon a purely build-to-suit strategy, "the process of acquiring the land, getting the site serviced, building the project and then providing the client, is too long for the end-user, who wants a warehouse, because he's got a contract and wants the property in two to three months' time," says Chudzyński. "So what we do," he continues, "is prepare the land up to building permission and then build, so that we cut out two to three months of waiting. We can shorten the period of providing the building for the client, which was between nine and fifteen months previously: now it's six to nine." He adds that Poland Central is applying for building permission at the moment for 47,000 square meters and is "already talking to interested clients" for whom the warehouse "can be adapted for their needs." He calls it an "all-purpose warehouse" that is "designed to be able to provide something much quicker than if you started from scratch."
"The majority of the clients I'm working with now have requirements outside Warsaw," says Sev Zakrewski of Jones Lang LaSalle's Industrial and Logistics Agency. "The Piotrków and Łódż regions, and mainly the former, are where you have your massive requirements of 20,000 square meters and above." The days when his work consisted solely of representing clients who only wanted access to the Warsaw region are fading fast.
One of the main reasons for this shift is, of course, Poland's position in the heart of Europe and the access it provides to markets further East. In the Piotrków area, for example, IKEA has built a 100,000 square meter roadside warehouse to service both Central Europe and Russia, while ProLogis has constructed a build-to-suit project for Unilever further up the road, as well as another for Ahold. Stryków too has attracted consumer goods companies: the Casino Group, (which operates the Geant and Leader Price hypermarkets), Carrefour and Gravelo. But only one region can be a hub, and with Poland's EU accession, both Piotrków and Stryków will be making conflictingly louder claims to be exactly that in the coming months.
Two of their bravest crusaders are Grontmij Real Estate Polska, which together with ING Real Estate, is to build a 66-hectare logistics park (with a targeted 300,000 square meters) in Stryków, and Poland Central, a Polish-British-American initiative, which along with the UK-based Ansbacher merchant bank, plans to construct a park on a 122-hectare plot near Piotrków, just opposite IKEA's warehouse.
Although with logistics location is everything, in Poland, the quality of transport infrastructure comes a close, complicating second. According to Jan Chudzyński, a consultant for Poland Central, Stryków's claim to be the potential logistics center of Poland is fine, "but not until the motorways come in." The plan is to build a junction at the A2 and A1 roads near the town, and this is integral to the whole area's appeal as a logistics center. In Chudzyński's view, however, we shouldn't hold our breath for this to happen. "How long does it take for Poland to construct an underground railway station? It's a station a year. I can't see the North-South road from Gdańsk to Cieszyn being built for twenty years, and as for the East-West, perhaps by 2015." IKEA's decision to choose Piotrków, in his opinion, was because if they'd gone to Stryków, they would have found themselves having to drive "their lorries through Łódż, which would take one and a half hours," and with Poland also having to adapt to new haulage regulations in the new Europe, the prospect was not a happy one.
Błażej Ciesieluak of Grontmij lends a more optimistic slant to the shape of things to come in and around Stryków. While he accepts that the prospects for the A1's realization lie some way off in the future, the A2 will be on the map in two years' time at the most. "There is no discussion," any longer, he argues and insists that construction over "twenty-two months" of the stretch from Konin to Stryków is not an issue any more. "The tender process is already underway," he says and is confident that the road will be taking traffic in 2006. "We've spoken with the voiovoidship and saw that the tenders were announced in the newspapers and on government websites."
Adding that the construction companies interested in the project include notables such as Strabag, NCC and others, he maintains that: "The building permit is there and they [the authorities] have finance from the EU. In 15 days time, you will see who will construct which section [of the motorway]." When comparing Stryków and Piotrków, he says: "Stryków is of course the best location because it's near a junction, whereas Piotrkow is around forty kilometers from its nearest. From today's point of view, perhaps, Piotrków is the most interesting area, but two or three years from now Stryków would have to be." More specifically, he has doubts about Poland Central's project, saying of the current plot that "there are only trees" at the moment and that "the first warehouse will appear there in two years time."
The further logistics moves away from the capital city, the bigger the warehouses get and, of course, the more difficult they get to fill, particularly in a market heavily weighed in favour of tenants. Both of the areas under discussion, are arguably 'build-to-suit regions' where, according to Sev Zakrewski, developers "don't build speculatively, because of the sheer size and speciality of the requirements." As far as the Grontmij/ING Real estate project in Stryków is concerned, Błażej Ciesieluak insists that his people "aren't thinking about speculative buildings, because this is strictly a region for big boxes." Poland Central, however, doesn't see things in such black and white terms.
"Unless you know what you're doing," acknowledges Jan Chudzyński, "speculative developments can be a disaster." But although he recognizes the pitfalls, this doesn't mean Poland Central will rule out taking some chances in Piotrków. The point is, in actual fact, that you're taking risks whichever road you choose, because if you decide upon a purely build-to-suit strategy, "the process of acquiring the land, getting the site serviced, building the project and then providing the client, is too long for the end-user, who wants a warehouse, because he's got a contract and wants the property in two to three months' time," says Chudzyński. "So what we do," he continues, "is prepare the land up to building permission and then build, so that we cut out two to three months of waiting. We can shorten the period of providing the building for the client, which was between nine and fifteen months previously: now it's six to nine." He adds that Poland Central is applying for building permission at the moment for 47,000 square meters and is "already talking to interested clients" for whom the warehouse "can be adapted for their needs." He calls it an "all-purpose warehouse" that is "designed to be able to provide something much quicker than if you started from scratch."
