Every year, the number of BREEAM and LEED-certified warehouse buildings in Poland increases. There are several reasons for the growth of sustainable development in the sector. On the one hand, educated tenants put pressure on developers. On the other hand, developers themselves increasingly adhere to the decisions of the Paris Agreement, which sets out a global action plan to prevent global warming. In the latest development schemes, companies strive to reduce the negative impact on the environment through more thoughtful development planning and by reducing the carbon footprint. Currently, certification is particularly popular in the office sector. But warehouse developers increasingly strive to meet the BREEAM or LEED construction standards too. Often long before the completion of the scheme, warehouse developers try to demonstrate that the project meets the requirements of sustainable construction and ecology by obtaining pre-certification. Indeed, the new green construction standards for new buildings are slowly becoming the norm within the warehouse sector.

New research from Cushman & Wakefield has identified Berlin, Reykjavik, Oslo, Warsaw, Zurich, Milan, Vienna, Madrid and Prague as emerging hotspots for data centre development in Europe. The European data centre market has long been dominated by the ‘FLAP-D’ markets of Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin, cities with their own deep business and financial sectors to serve. While these markets are still critical to the data centre ecosystem as entry points - and with over 500 MW of construction underway among them - interest in the FLAP-D markets is now competing with physical limitations including a lack of energy to power the centres, limited stock and a need to be closer to regional users.

Trei Real Estate GmbH has taken out a long-term loan in a volume of €51 million through its Polish subsidiary, Trei Real Estate Poland from pbb Deutsche Pfandbriefbank, a German specialist lender for commercial real estate finance. The loan represents a cross-border financing arrangement and breaks down into two tranches of five and ten years, respectively. It is collateralised with 40 supermarkets from the existing portfolio of Trei Poland, the supermarkets being occupied by Biedronka. Trei intends to use the borrowed capital to finance its growth trajectory.

Kajima Poland has completed the extension and reconstruction of the Bydgoszcz headquarters of tyre e-retailer Oponeo.pl.

According to the latest report by Cresa, commercial real estate investment volume in Poland surpassed €2.85 billion, the second-best result in the country’s history. The key growth drivers were the office and industrial markets which together generated just more than 84% of the investment volume. The industrial market attracted nearly €1.08 billion worth of investments, which represented an all-time high, while the office market saw nearly €1.33 billion worth of deals, the second-best result of the segment in the history.

The first half of 2020 was the strongest on record for the warehouse and industrial market in Poland, says Savills. Despite COVID-19 challenges, take-up set an all-time high halfway through the year. In addition, the leasing volume and the amount of new space coming onto the market were higher in Q2 than in the first three months of the year.

Due to the lockdown caused by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, most companies embraced a remote working model and scaled-down business activity. How did this affect the Polish office market? Cushman & Wakefield presented a summary of H1 2020.

Gross demand on the Polish industrial market reached 2.2 million sqm in H1 2020 which is the best result for the first half of the year in the market’s history. New leases and expansions accounted for nearly 1.7 million sqm, which is a 30% improvement y-o-y. This means that Poland is the only country in Europe to have seen net demand growth in H1 2020, according to JLL.

Panattoni has announced another Warsaw development, which is to be built on a 1.9 ha site next to the S7 junction with the S8 expressway just a few kilometres from Warsaw's Chopin Airport. City Logistics Warsaw Airport II will have an area of 9,000 sqm and construction work is to begin in August.

According to consulting company Walter Herz, the consistently expanding office market of Tri-City has the lowest vacancy rate in Poland currently and the office stock of the Tri-City agglomeration will exceed 1 million sqm after the construction of the ongoing investments is completed.