Damco India leases 2.43 lakh sq. ft. of warehousing space in Bhiwandi

The lock-in period is for three years and the rent escalation provision states that there would be a 4 percent increase in rent at the end of every 12 months, the documents showed (Representative image)

Damco India, a subsidiary of international container shipping and logistics giant AP Moller-Maersk, has taken a warehousing facility spread across 243,000 sq. ft. on lease for five years. The facility is in Bhiwandi on the outskirts of Mumbai, documents accessed by CRE Matrix showed.

The starting monthly rent is Rs 47.62 lakh. The company has paid a security deposit of Rs 1.90 crore for the property, the documents showed. The leave and licence agreement was registered on October 21, 2022.

The lock-in period is for three years and the rent escalation provision states that there would be a 4 percent increase in rent at the end of every 12 months, the documents showed.

Damco, a separate brand earlier, has now been integrated with the Maersk brand.

In September, Maersk India inaugurated its fifth warehousing facility this year spread over 250,000 sq ft, in Bhiwandi taking its total footprint to over 2.1 million sq. ft., including the warehouses from the recently completed acquisition of LF Logistics, a company statement said.

Maersk’s new facility in Bhiwandi is the fifth to go live in 2022 after one each at Sikandrabad in Uttar Pradesh, Kolkata in West Bengal, and Pune and Bhiwandi in Maharashtra. Being strategically located on the Mumbai-Nashik highway, it provides excellent connectivity to manufacturing hubs and the Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai, it said.

In September this year, Maersk also inaugurated two new warehouses in the National Capital Region (NCR). The 420,000 sq. ft. warehouse in Farrukhnagar, Haryana, is connected to the busy manufacturing around Gurugram.

With close proximity to the Western Direct Freight Corridor (DFC), it will be a key facility for retail, FMCG and large e-commerce customers, the company said, adding that its 100,000 sq. ft. warehouse at Dadri, located within the Inland Container Depot (ICD) in the Uttar Pradesh town, offers customers a bonded warehousing solution.

Being at the confluence of the Western and Eastern DFC, having a railhead, proximity to eight national highways, and the upcoming Jewar airport within 60 km range, this warehouse has all the prime attributes that will add value to customers’ supply chains, the company said.

In November, the company flagged off a weekly, dedicated rail service, the Pratigya Express, from the Sonipat, Haryana, and ICD to APM Terminals Pipavav Port in Gujarat.

A report by the Confederation of Real Estate Developers' Associations of India (CREDAI) and property consultants Anarock said that Grade-A warehousing will grow 15 percent by 2025 due to growing demand, as Grade-B and Grade-C warehouses are deemed inadequate for the needs of modern businesses.

The report said that India had become a land of opportunity for the warehousing sector, which is poised to clock revenues of $2.8 billion by 2025.