Poland’s warehouse supply hit a record high at the end of Q3 2017. The industrial stock totalled 12.86 million sqm, which represented an 18% rise year-on-year. Tenant demand remained robust on the country’s core warehouse markets, driven largely by logistics operators whose share in total take-up amounted to 45%. The vacancy rate slipped down by 0.8 percentage points year-on-year while headline and effective rents remained largely unchanged, reveals Cushman & Wakefield.

Real estate developer Zacaria announced the expansion of Western Industrial Park in Oradea with a new warehouse of more than 6,300 sqm, already commissioned by a German tenant in the process of opening its first subsidiary in Romania.

German discount supermarket chain Penny Market opened a logistics centre in Veszprém, Western Hungary, following a nearly €30 million (HUF 9 billion) investment. The facility offers 26,500 sqm of warehouse space on a 10 ha land. The new warehouse can hold 15,000 pallets.

DHL Express recently moved into its new, tailor made warehouse of 6,000 sqm leased in Budapest Airport's new logistic facility built by Market Építő. Budapest Airport appointed CBRE Hungary for the construction management services.

Prologis has begun construction of a new 23,710 square metre build-to-suit facility at Prologis Park Prague-Rudna for VAFO PRAHA, the Czech family-owned pet food producer. With construction of Building 19, the park will be fully developed and will comprise almost 250,000 square meters of distribution space.

The construction works on the new business park in Craiova are ongoing and the first 10,000 sqm of industrial space will be delivered by the end of the year, Romanian real estate developer Zacaria announced. Southern Industrial Park will comprise 43,000 sqm of Class A industrial space, fully equipped for activities such as storage, logistics, cross-docking or manufacturing.

The industrial real estate market in Hungary hit the vacancy rate of 5.5% in the first half of 2017, which is the lowest number on record since it has been measured by the Budapest Research Forum (BRF). In total, less than 73,000 sqm space is currently vacant in the Budapest metropolitan area of the 1.95 million sqm total modern logistics area, and only four Class A buildings can offer more than 5,000 sqm contiguous warehouse space. The lack of available space is due to the strong absorption of the last few years, and at the same time there are still limited number of speculative projects in progress or have building permits, says Tamás Beck, Director of Industrial Agency at Colliers International Hungary.

Panattoni Europe has signed a lease with Multidekor, maker of professional ornaments and festive lighting solutions for cities and shopping malls. The transaction covers 22,600 sqm of warehouse and production space at the planned Panattoni Park Konotopa II. The development is set to commence this autumn, and will be completed in April 2018.

P3 is to start the construction of two new warehouses with a total floor area of 25,500 sqm at the P3 Prague Horní Počernice logistics park to respond to growing demand for space at the park. Once the expansion is completed, the park will have a total lettable area of nearly 380,000 sqm. Scheduled to start in the second half of 2017, construction will be completed at the beginning of 2018.

Poland’s industrial and warehouse sector recorded the strongest first quarter in its history. Schemes with the total area of 592,000 sqm were delivered to the market between January and the end of March, which represents as much as 45% of the total volume of 2016. BNP Paribas Real Estate highlights that the invariable driving force behind the market’s growth for the past several quarters have been businesses from the e-commerce sector.