IAMC News Briefs—Week of January 30, 2023
By John Salustri
SUPPLY CHAIN DIVE—Maersk is deploying automated drones in a strategy to enhance warehousing efficiency. Supplied by Verity and already in use at four locations, the drones will snap pix of SKUs on pallets to identify possible errors. Reportedly, that data will automatically compare with info “in the warehouse management system then distilled . . . into insights for shippers.” The ultimate plan is to integrate the technology into all of its warehouses with palletized storage.
https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/Maersk-verity-drones-warehouse-management/628296/
COMMERCIAL PROPERTY EXECUTIVE—Zinc8 Energy Solutions, a Vancouver-based maker of sustainable energy-storage products, has upstate New York in its sites for its inaugural US headquarters and production facility. The location, iPark 87, is a former IBM asset in Kingston. But Zinc8 will be adding more than its planned 237,000-square-foot project to the campus, owned by National Resources. It also seeds a planned 200-acre mixed-use technology campus dedicated to sustainability. The anchor’s locational decision was eased by a handful of incentives as well as the credits made available through the Inflation Reduction Act.
https://www.commercialsearch.com/news/zinc8-to-open-empire-state-hq/
COMMERCIAL OBSERVER—"The out-of-control environment from 2020 through the first half of 2022 started to ease last summer and will ‘finally normalize’ in 2023,” says Commercial Observer, quoting new data from Commercial Edge. While the industrial market is expected to remain one of the “more attractive asset classes in commercial real estate,” the looming recession and ongoing interest rate hikes (the latest of which occurred on February 1) is expected to put downward pressure on leasing and cool transaction volume. But a cooling front doesn’t imply doldrums. Even with last year’s “significant” drop in sales volume over 2021, from $125.7 billion to $88.3 billion, vacancies continued to fall through the year, especially in the top 30 US markets, to 3.9%. Meanwhile, rents grew 6.3% year over year.
https://commercialobserver.com/2023/01/us-warehouse-industrial-cool-sales-2022/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=DailyRU&utm_term=2023-31-01-30404379
GLOBEST.COM—That industrial’s growth is a function of market demand is clear. That hasn’t stopped more than 60 environmental labor, community and academic groups from banning together to block new warehouse development in California’s Inland Empire. The moratorium would last for two years. The coalition’s open letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom awaits his response. No industrial-group counterarguments were yet reported. Ironically, the Inland Empire led the nation’s industrial rent growth last year, with rents increasing 14.2%, reports Commercial Observer.
https://www.globest.com/2023/02/01/coalition-wants-two-year-moratorium-on-inland-empire-warehouses/
NAIOP—Yes, protests are taking place in SoCal, and a cooling trend looms, but the industrial market is doing its part to boost the national economy. In 2022, according to NAIOP, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association, over the past five years, warehouse construction averaged $38.1 billion, and last year alone, overall activity hit $52.5 billion, up 8.9% from 2021. Manufacturing construction averaged $37.2 billion over the past five years, and total industrial activity “surged,” says the report, to $73.5 billion, up 143.4% over 2021.
https://www.naiop.org/research-and-publications/research-reports/reports/economic-impacts-of-commercial-real-estate-2023-us-edition/