SBUs with stable market growth

Leading advisory company providing a wide range of professional services in commercial real estate and investment management, Colliers, has published a report Small Business Units: Small warehouses with great potential. The publication answers a number of important questions about this segment of the industrial market, such as: what has changed in recent years, what are the reasons for accelerating the development of this sector, and why and for whom is the SBU format attractive? Attention has also been paid to the needs of tenants in terms of location, technical specifications, and lease conditions for this type of facility. The report has been prepared in cooperation with 7R, Ideal Idea Formad, and SEGRO.

For many years, the SBU segment in Poland has existed in the shadow of big-box warehouses. However, this format has always shown great potential, which is now increasingly seen by market players. As the name suggests, SBU facilities consist of small business modules offering great flexibility. Such projects appeared on the Polish industrial market in the second half of the 1990s, first in Warsaw and, after 2004, also in other locations.  

“For a long time, SBU warehouses were defined as being a 500-600 sqm module, located in a building dedicated to this formula or within a larger warehouse complex. Currently, an SBU is defined mainly as having a set of features and possible functions that such a space can provide to tenants,” Dominika Jędrak, Director of Research and Consultancy Services at Colliers, said.

The supply of SBU warehouses in Poland amounts to approximately 1.7 million sqm, which accounts for 8 percent of the total modern industrial space stock in the country (21.4 million sqm). More than half of SBU space (51 percent) is located in Warsaw.

(WBJ)