Tritax Big Box pre-lets new Dartford 'mega box' development

Tritax Big Box REIT has received planning consent and exchanged contracts with an unnamed online retailer to pre-let a new ‘mega box’ logistics building, it announced on Monday.

Total development cost for delivery, including land and demolition, was expected to be £205m. The development had been committed to using existing credit facilities, with a further £164m of costs to completion.

Following completion, the customer would occupy more than seven million square feet of logistics space within the firm’s portfolio, representing about 19% of total contracted rent roll.

Tritax said the project development would deliver attractive returns to investors, based on a new 20-year lease, subject to annual upward-only rent reviews indexed to the consumer price index, collared at 1% per annum and capped at 3% a year, with the first review in the summer of 2022.

The company would also benefit from a licence fee from the developer during the construction period, equivalent to the annual rent payable by the customer following completion.

At 0812 BST, shares in Tritax Big Box were down 2.09% at 136.1p.