Businessman John Wade, who offloaded salty food company Snack Brands Australia last year, has snapped up a Campbellfield factory in Melbourne's northern industrial heartland for $10 million on a 7.4 per cent yield.
Mr Wade was part of a consortium of investors who acquired Snack Brands Australia, the maker of Kettle Chips, CCs, Samboy and Cheezels, for a $30 million song in 2008.
The investors on-sold the salty snack maker last year to Philippines-based Universal Robina for $600 million.
Part of the proceeds from the sale are now invested in a large warehouse at 9 Vanessa Road that is fully leased for the next six years to ASX-listed packaging products supplier Orora (formerly Amcor) on terms returning $740,370 a year.
NSW-based property player Cerno Property Group sold the site, said Chris Jones from Dawkins Occhiuto who brokered the deal with JLL's Matt Ellis.
Mr Jones said industrial yields in Melbourne had tightened by up to 50 basis in the past 12 months and were at their lowest point in a decade.
"We will continue to see that tightening while industrial property offers such an attractive differentiation to other types of property investment," he said.
Another business recently making a long-term industrial play was laboratory testing group Eurofins Scientific.
Eurofins will establish its regional headquarters in on a 15,870 square metre site which it purchased from Tatts Group for about $5.8 million.
The building at 6 Monterey Road in Dandenong had been occupied by Tatts Group since 1987, said JLL's Cameron Stuckey.
Mr Stuckey, who handled the transaction with CBRE's James Jorgensen, said food manufacturing was replacing other sectors in the city's eastern industrial core.
"Everyone talks about manufacturing as if it's a dead duck, but we're seeing food manufacturing, particularly with exports to Asia, growing," he said.
Eurofins has plans for a $25 million redevelopment of the site into a new food and materials testing centre.
The group specialises in product testing for the food, environment and pharmaceutical industries.
Eurofins environment managing director Sefton McGraw said 300 staff would move in over the next five years.
A second stage of development would create space for another 200 staff to make it one of the largest laboratory facilities in the southern hemisphere, he said.
Many food and dairy operators are located in the city's east.
"New demand in the south east is primarily driven from food product manufacturing, machinery and equipment manufacturing and fabricated metal production," Mr Stuckey said.
