Panattoni, new speculative development in Scarmagno (TO)

Panattoni, a leading player in the industrial real estate market and an institutional capital investor in Europe, has launched the speculative development of a 90,000 sqm logistics park in Scarmagno, near Turin, following the acquisition of a 241,000 sqm site. This marks Panattoni’s second project in Italy since the recent opening of its Milan headquarters, following a 15,000 sqm Grade A logistics development in Ospedaletto Lodigiano, located 30 minutes from Milan city center.

Jean-Luc Saporito, Managing Director of Panattoni Italy, stated: “Panattoni Park Torino Nord will be situated in Italy’s economic heartland, boasting excellent connections to the Turin airport and its container terminal - both approximately 30 minutes away - as well as to France and Switzerland. Italy still has significant ground to cover to keep pace with the growth of e-commerce, while demand for modern logistics facilities with high environmental standards has surged and shows no signs of slowing down. Turin is ideally positioned to serve the surrounding area - one of Europe’s most thriving regions, home to over 14 million consumers. We are confident that our new park will attract interest from logistics service providers, a sector that is expanding rapidly in Italy”.

Panattoni’s new Turin park will feature a single-story warehouse spanning nearly 90,000 sqm, with a clear height of 12 meters under the beam, LED lighting, a roof-mounted photovoltaic system, employee amenities (including a café, recreational areas, and sports facilities), and 3,700 sqm of office space. The facility aims to achieve LEED Gold or BREEAM Very Good certification and will include a large parking for both cars and trucks. Construction is scheduled to begin in September 2023. Upon completion in 2024, the facility is expected to create up to 300 new jobs for Turin and the surrounding area.

Located near the A5 junction of the A4 motorway, Panattoni Park Torino Nord is just a 20-minute drive from Turin and one hour from Milan, while Genoa, Lyon, and Zurich can be reached within 2-4 hours. The Turin Interport is Europe’s second-largest dry port for high-tech products, with 200 operators handling three million tons of freight annually. A dry port is an intermodal terminal directly connected to a seaport via high-capacity transport modes, including trains.

As recently as 2019, Italy was one of the countries with the lowest penetration of online sales - it reached just 5% of retail sales value. CBRE predicts that this share will double by 2024, with e-commerce revenues reaching EUR 22.3 billion. In 2021, nearly 2.5 million sqm of logistics space were leased in Italy - a record high roughly equivalent to the total volume of new space brought to market that year, 25% of which was built speculatively. By the end of 2021, the total stock of warehouse and industrial space exceeded 22 million sqm, a figure that nonetheless remains below the EU average in terms of sqm per capita.

Interest among logistics developers and public authorities in transforming and repurposing abandoned factories is surging in Italy, driven by the vast inventory of existing structures (covering nearly 8,500 square kilometers - an area the size of Umbria) and a desire to preserve these sites.

Jean-Luc Saporito concluded: “Italy’s logistics real estate market is clearly undersized compared to other European countries, and we will continue to explore it in search of new sites and opportunities”.