Ayala Land unit acquires 55-ha Batangas land for future technopark

AyalaLand Logistics Holdings Corp. (ALLHC) said it was paying nearly P677.7 million to purchase 55 hectares (ha) of land in Padre Garcia, Batangas, which would be the location of its future Batangas Technopark.

AyalaLand Logistics is the listed subsidiary of property giant Ayala Land that is focused on industrial estates, warehouse and cold storage facilities.

The properties to be acquired, via subsidiary Laguna Technopark Inc., were 11 adjoining lots spanning 547,788 square meters, the company said in a regulatory filing on Friday. The lots were purchased from unnamed individual and corporate sellers.

“This transaction increases ALLHC’s industrial park portfolio and further strengthens the vision to be the leading real estate logistics and industrial estate developer in the Philippines,” AyalaLand Logistics said.

The company has four other industrial estates or technoparks in Laguna, Cavite, Laguindingan and Pampanga. The Batangas Technopark would target local and international businesses involved in “nonpolluting” segments.

Expansion plans

“The acquisition is a strategic move that furthers ALLHC’s goal of building [a] national footprint by increasing its presence in key areas nationwide,” the company’s chief operating officer, Patrick Avila, said in an earlier statement.

Last February, AyalaLand Logistics also acquired an existing 64,000 square meters “ready-built facility” in Sto. Tomas, Batangas.

The projects were in line with the company’s broader expansion plans. In early May, AyalaLand Logistics revealed a partnership with FLOW Digital Infrastructure, backed by regional investment firm PAG, to build carrier neutral data centers to tap blooming demand for “data consumption, digitization, 5G connectivity and data localization trends.”

It plans to bring to service a 4.5-megawatt data center, together with FLOW, by the fourth quarter of 2023.

Diversifying portfolio

Bernard Vincent Dy, Ayala Land CEO and AyalaLand Logistics chair, earlier told the Inquirer their data center expansion was “aligned with the practice of global real estate logistics companies, geared towards diversifying its portfolio and enhancing of the value of its industrial landbank.”

He also maintained this would not compete with the plans of affiliate Globe Telecom, which formed a separate $350-million data center venture with parent firm, Ayala Corp., and ST Telemedia Global Data Centres to build data center facilities across the Philippines.