In a bid to lower its debt burden, Allcargo Logistics Ltd, part of Avvashya Group, has partnered with Blackstone Group, to become a minority stakeholder in the company’s’ logistics park vertical.
Blackstone Group, the global private equity investor, will be investing up to Rs 380 crore in the logistics park vertical to develop industrial and logistics parks across India, said Allcargo in a release on Monday.
“We plan to dilute our stake and become a minority shareholder in the five-logistics park section which will reduce our debt by about 90 per cent. We should be making an announcement on logistics park stake sale in the next 2-3 weeks,” Shashi Kiran Shetty, chairman at Allcargo Logistics had told Business Standard earlier.
Existing debt, along with the ongoing organic expansions and Gati stake buy put together, Allcargo Logistics has a debt of Rs 1,200 crore.
This investment would make Blackstone Group the majority stakeholder in Allcargo Logistics’ logistics park vertical, a move the latter was planning since its stake buy in Gati Ltd last month.
Allcargo Logistics forayed into the express segment last month via the Rs 450-crore stake buy in Gati.
The transaction with Blackstone is expected to conclude in a phased manner over the next 12 months, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions and achievement of certain milestones, said the release.
Allcargo has completed and also has some ongoing projects in advanced stages of development on 6 million sq ft of Grade-A logistics parks across the National Capital Region (NCR) Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune, JNPT in MMR (Mumbai), Hosur and Goa.
Nearly 80 per cent of the company’s warehousing portfolio is pre-leased of which close to 1.5 million sq ft is already income-producing, said the release.
Meanwhile, Allcargo spokespersons remained unavailable for more details on the partnership.
Source: Business-Standard