SITUATION. Well-located logistics and industrial-yard real estate is scarce and consolidating across Europe, and the tenants are a small set of large, multi-country operators — Amazon, DHL, Kuehne+Nagel, TIP. Grid-connected power is becoming a valuable feature of these sites, but it is one value lever among several, not the point.
COMPLICATION. Two obvious moves both fail. Leading with power — "build electric depots and rent them to fleets" — narrows the funnel to a demand that is not broadly there yet. And spreading capital thinly across many countries from Day 1, while sub-scale, raises the cost of every deal: it turns "one relationship, many leases" into "many relationships, many leases."
RESOLUTION. Buy the scarce asset — well-located logistics yards — on income that pays today, underwritten on the plain-IOS case with power, storage and autonomy as free upside. Grow by following a few multi-country customer relationships across markets, concentrating first and expanding as the commercial engine scales.
Well-located yards are scarce and hard to replicate. Lysara can develop them, secure power where it pays, and — the missing piece — build the multi-country customer relationships that fill them.
Yards let on income already clear ~14% levered. Electrification and storage lift the best sites to the mid-teens — earned on real development value, not financial engineering.
Land is bought on the income case alone; build-to-suit is pursued only where planning, leasing and power risk are avoided. Grow concentrated, then expand — dispersion is the enemy when sub-scale.
The economics, reconciled: land is underwritten on the plain-income case (~14% levered); the electrification upside, when a tenant exercises it, lifts a representative site to ~15% at a realistic ~6.5% exit yield (≈3.0x) — earned development value, not the ~17% an optimistic 5.5% exit would show. The ask: approve staged deployment into income-underwritten logistics yards now, weighted to Europe and driven opportunistically by the Amazon and target-tenant pipeline; and run a six-week, data-led validation (primary customer research) to fix the market segmentation, the geographic phasing and — decisively — the commercial hire, before scaling (§6).
Three facts make this a genuine opportunity rather than a crowded trade.
Well-located industrial outdoor storage and logistics yards are supply-constrained, fragmented and consolidating: UK transaction volume rose 66% in 2025, and the European market is larger and less mature — the reason a platform like Goodman is far more Europe-weighted than UK. The land trades at roughly £0.5–1.5M/acre in regional markets and £2–4M/acre in the top metros, an order of magnitude below the £8–15M/acre that data-centre "powered land" commands, at an entry yield on cost around 7.5%.
Securing an electricity connection is an increasingly scarce, value-creating act (the UK demand-connection queue alone runs to ~125 GW, with a connection regime mid-reform), and grid cost is excluded from the UK depot-charging grant — so whoever solves it captures the value. But power sits alongside battery storage and, in time, autonomous-fleet uses as embedded upside levers. The discipline is to buy on income and treat every one of these as free optionality, not a requirement for the deal to work.
Most competitors hold one piece; the moat is holding several together. Yard aggregators (Blackstone, Realterm, Alterra) own and build land but have no power edge or fleet pull; charging operators have fleet ties and power know-how but own no land; long-income funds have capital but no origination. Lysara can develop the asset, secure power where it pays, and operate multi-tenant sites lightly — and the piece that is currently missing and pivotal is the pan-European customer relationship (§7).
| Capability / layer | Stance | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Land + secured grid connection | OWN | The scarce, value-creating, hard-to-replicate asset. Defensible at the site and city level. |
| Forward-funding / development | OWN | Captures the development-to-stabilised value spread — the only legitimate source of upside. |
| Multi-country customer relationship | BUILD | The compounding asset and the current gap: "one relationship, many leases." The pivotal hire. |
| Multi-tenant site operations | LICENSE | Run 2–4-tenant sites asset-light on Outpost's operating platform (OGA) rather than building a management arm. |
| Charging kit, batteries, autonomy tech | PARTNER | Fast-depreciating or merchant; the firms that own these are the ones failing. Rent in or partner. |
The track record is real but thin — and the relationship came pre-supplied both times. Lysara has executed this model twice: one yard developed as a forward-funded Amazon EV-van depot (CRT Lesquin, France) and one acquired as a stabilised Amazon last-mile hub (Belfast). Both validate the asset and the tenant demand — but in both, the Amazon relationship was already in place. Originating new multi-country customer relationships, and developing at scale, is the capability Lysara must still build (§7).
The strategy sequences four moves so capital is always deployed into something that pays, while the scarce upside is captured for free.
| Step | What it adds | Demand it needs | Return / effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · Buy | Well-located logistics yards, bought cheaply on income | Ordinary logistics / storage demand — proven today | ~7.5% entry yield on cost; income from day one |
| 2 · Let | Single-tenant, or 2–4-tenant multi-let on standard terms | Major operators (Amazon, DHL, Kuehne+Nagel, TIP) | ~14% levered — the base case |
| 3 · Upside | Exercise embedded options — electrify, add storage, enable autonomy | A tenant electrifying / an energy or AV partner | Mid-teens levered; the development spread is earned here |
| 4 · Network | Follow the customer across markets | A repeatable, multi-country customer relationship | Portfolio scale and a tighter exit |
Lysara owns the durable layer (land, connection, structure) and collects rent; it does not run short-term, monthly-churn operations, charging hardware or merchant batteries — the roles where this sector loses money. 2–4-tenant multi-let is explicitly in scope alongside single-tenant NNN: it widens the acquisition and leasing aperture, and where a site is already physically demised, two tenants is little net additional execution over one. Multi-let sites are run asset-light on Outpost's operating platform (OGA), licensed in rather than staffed up.
| In scope today | Under consideration (upside cases) |
|---|---|
| All Outpost property types (IOS yards, truck/trailer and vehicle parking, transport-infrastructure sites) | Existing multideck car parks — where the standalone economics work and there is an autonomous-fleet (e.g. Waymo-style) staging upside |
| Multistorey van parks (e.g. Weybridge) | Sites let to a battery-storage (BESS) operator — Lysara as landlord to an energy tenant |
| Combined fulfilment-centre-and-parking assets (e.g. Belfast) | Electrification of any in-scope site as its tenant converts |
Land is bought on the income case: a representative yard clears about 14% levered on rent and indexation alone, with no reliance on the upside. The exhibit below shows what the embedded electrification option is worth if a tenant exercises it — the step to the mid-teens comes from selling a finished, leased, seasoned asset at a tighter yield than it was built at. That spread is real only if it is earned. We underwrite that upside to a ~6.5% exit — roughly a 15% levered IRR, in line with Lysara's own recent acquisition (~6.6%); a 6.0% exit (~15.9%) is upside, and the ~17% sometimes cited assumes a 5.5% exit we do not underwrite.
| Strategy leg | Stabilised YoC | Levered IRR (realistic exit) | Multiple | Role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Logistics yard, let on income | 6.6% | ~13.9% | 2.9x | Base load — deploy now |
| Electrification upside (pre-let) | 7.2% | ~15.0% at a 6.5% exit (14% on income alone; 15.9% at 6.0%) | 3.1x | Embedded option — earned |
| Battery-storage ground rent | 11.0% | ~26.7% | 6.0x | Accretive where a connection exists; landlord only |
| Long-income (NNN) land | 5.8% | ~11.8% | 2.6x | Lower-return income sleeve |
| Own the battery / operate | 6.9% | ~8.5% | 1.8x | Rejected — operator risk, structural loss |
The prize is European. The deep, consolidating logistics-yard markets sit on the Continent — the reason a platform like Goodman is far more Europe-skewed than UK — so the ambition is roughly 75% Europe / 25% UK over time, across the markets west of Poland. But that is an outcome to grow into, not a fixed mix to hit, and it resolves into two speeds:
Complexity is controlled two ways: a consistent asset type across every market, and a bias to multi-country tenants (Amazon, DHL, Kuehne+Nagel, TIP) so that one relationship travels. Crucially, the precise country phasing is a data-led output of the six-week customer research (§6), not a call to make from a desk today.
| Market | IOS depth & scarcity | Multi-country tenant density | Electrification trigger | Provisional role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | Deep, institutionalising | High (existing relationships) | Weak (charge-zones, not bans) | CORE — already operating; ~25% of the ambition |
| Germany | Large; acute grid congestion | Very high (DHL, K+N) | Weak (no van mandate) | ANCHOR-EU — asset & tenant depth |
| Netherlands | Dense; severe grid scarcity | High | Strong (true zero-emission ban) | ANCHOR-EU — best demand, but a cold start |
| France | Large; existing Lysara book | High | Contested (enforcement suspended) | ANCHOR-EU — existing presence (Lesquin) |
| Belgium | Benelux logistics core (Antwerp) | High | Brussels 2030 ban; Flanders paused | EXPAND — natural Benelux adjacency |
| Spain | Large, growing | Medium–high | Nationally-mandated zones, tightening | EXPAND — large enforced market |
| Italy | Large; fragmented | Medium | Zone patchwork | EXPAND — as the engine scales |
| Nordics | Smaller / served | Lower | Genuine zones but small | WATCH — opportunistic income only |
There is more than one way to reach a European network of logistics real estate. Treating them as a portfolio — a base load, a channel, an expansion product and an opportunistic source — is more robust than a single path.
| Use of capital | Share of tranche | What it buys | Pacing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base load — income-underwritten yards | ~60–70% | ~20–30 yards (~£6–10M each), single- or multi-let, weighted to Europe | Deploy now, over ~3 years |
| Expansion — build-to-suit on conversion | ~20–25% | ~5–10 de-risked pre-let developments (~£12–13M each) | As tenants electrify, years 1–4 |
| Opportunistic — sale-and-leaseback | ~10% | 1–2 existing portfolios from a rationalising operator | Opportunistic |
| Channel — customer framework | Origination, not capital | A master relationship that feeds all three above | Parallel, now |
The strategy deploys income capital now while it tests what it does not yet know. Before finalising the roles or the geographic phasing, a six-week, data-led validation — primary customer interviews run with the Lysara team and Dean, with defined checkpoints with Jeff and Eric — will pin down market segmentation, demand lifecycles, procurement behaviour and opportunity sizing. Those answers define both the phasing (§4) and the hires (§7).
| Condition | Why it matters | How we test it |
|---|---|---|
| We can source yards at the basis | The entry economics rest on ~7.5% YoC at £0.5–4M/acre | Two live acquisitions taken to offer stage, with real budgets |
| We can land a pivotal commercial leader and anchor customers | "One relationship, many leases" is the whole GTM leverage, and the current gap | Customer research defines the hire spec; at least one multi-country relationship advancing within two quarters |
| The market segments as we assume | Phasing, sizing and roles all depend on it | Primary interviews on demand lifecycles, procurement behaviour and segmentation |
| The exit clears at a realistic ~6.5% yield | Upside returns must come from the earned development spread, not assumed compression | A broker pull of comparable long-income sales; underwrite 6.5%, exclude sub-6% |
| The return bar is agreed with Finance | Whether the strategy clears its target flips on gross-vs-net and the hold convention | A return-bar reconciliation with Finance in week one |
The decision rule. If the sourcing and income conditions hold, deploy now into income-underwritten yards regardless of the rest. Commit to the customer-led build-to-suit engine once the research confirms the segmentation and a pivotal commercial relationship is in hand. If it is not yet there, keep deploying into income yards and expand later — the capital is productive either way.
The pivotal gap is commercial: the multi-country customer relationships that make "one relationship, many leases" work do not yet exist in-house, and landing the right go-to-market leader is arguably more important than the investment hire. It lands on a lean team already mid-transition — an administration handover, a property-management reset, asset management brought in-house, and simultaneous accounting/finance changes, with recent year-end feedback questioning the teams' ability to deliver clean numbers on time. Finalise the strategy and the segmentation before recruiting (the six-week task, §6), so the roles fit the task — and name who runs this and what they stop doing.
| Other risks | Read & mitigant |
|---|---|
| Geographic dispersion | Pan-European on Day 1 turns "one relationship, many leases" into "many relationships, many leases"; concentrate the relationship engine, then expand — income acquisitions can be broader. |
| Exit-yield dependency | Underwrite ~6.5%, stress 5.5–7.0%; the development spread is the only legitimate upside and must be earned. |
| Tenant concentration | Today the book is Amazon-heavy; a wider multi-country tenant set (DHL, K+N, TIP) is the fix, and the reason the commercial hire matters. |
| Upside not arriving | The income base does not depend on it; power, storage and autonomy are free options, never underwritten. |
| Regulatory dependence | Electrification demand varies by market and mandate; buy on income so no single regime is load-bearing. |
| House concentration | GreenPoint already owns Outpost, a US logistics-yard platform; a European sister platform doubles the firm into one asset class. Confirm who arbitrates overlap — sourcing, capital, talent — and why two vehicles. Licensing Outpost's operating platform (OGA) turns part of that overlap into leverage. |
Method. This paper draws on desk research across logistics-real-estate supply, fleet-electrification demand, the competitive landscape, and a formula-driven return model, pressure-tested through independent adversarial review. Market data is cited to first-party and official sources. Modelled returns are illustrative and require primary inputs — real budgets, transacted exit comparables, a confirmed return mandate, and the §6 customer research — before underwriting; internal deal figures must be tied to dated investment-committee models (with leverage, debt cost, exit yield and hold) before any committee or investor use.
Sources. Green Street (IOS volume) · BE News (IOS rents) · Savills / Resultsense (powered land) · Commercial Observer (electrified IOS) · CoStar (Belfast) · IPE (long-income buyers) · Ofgem (connections reform) · GOV.UK (grid connections) · ICCT (Netherlands) · NL Times (Dutch grid queue) · Connexion France · The Local (Spain) · Energy-Storage.news (Germany) · Bank of England (Bank Rate).