Major German retailer Globus Group, which owns the Globus hypermarket chain in Russia, has leased a 45,000-square-meter plot at an industrial park in the Moscow region.
The company will use the warehouse space at the Kholmogory industrial park as a distribution center, according to real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) which advised Globus on the deal.
It is a record-setting deal for an international grocery retailer on the Russian warehousing market, Pyotr Zaritsky, head of the warehouse and industrial department at JLL, said in a statement last week.
The value of the deal remains confidential, JLL said.
Globus has operated on the Russian market since 2006 and has 10 hypermarkets in Russia. The company plans to open its largest outlet yet in the town of Pushkino in the Moscow region this year.
The Kholmogory industrial park is located 30 kilometers outside Moscow. The total area of the complex is 250,000 square meters.
According to industry analysts polled by the Vedomosti business daily, the 45,000-square-meter lease is the largest deal on the warehouse property market involving a foreign company in two years.
The absolute record belongs to Swedish furniture giant IKEA, which in 2013 leased 71,800 square meters in the Moscow region logistics park Logopark Sever, according to Vedomosti.
A year earlier, German sportswear retailer Adidas leased 65,000 square meters in warehouse complex PNK Chekhov-2 in the Moscow region, Vedomosti reported.
In the first eight months of 2015, eight out of 45 warehouse lease deals in the Moscow region involved foreign companies. In total they rented about 103,000 square meters out of the 460,000 square meters of warehouse space rented out, Vedomosti reported, citing Vyacheslav Kholopov, director for office and warehouse property at real estate consultancy Knight Frank.