Owing to an economic slowdown due to the raging coronavirus crisis, warehouse transactions in Pune witnessed a record dip of 42 per cent in the financial year 2020-21, shared property consultant Knight Frank in their latest report on warehouse transactions for the year 2020-21.
Knight Frank highlighted how Pune and Ahmedabad have accounted for the least such transactions in the country.
Released in Pune on Tuesday, the report revealed that the district had seen 2.8 million square feet of warehouse transactions in the last fiscal. During the previous financial year (2019-20), Pune had seen 4.8 million square feet of such transactions.
Except Chennai, all the major cities have recorded a steep dip in such transactions. Chennai has stood out by recording a 4 per cent growth in such transactions.
The sector has been driven by automobiles, electronics, pharmaceuticals and other segments of the manufacturing industry.
In what comes as a surprise, however, is that E-commerce, once the main catalyst behind warehousing growth, had contributed just two per cent of the transactions.
On the other hand, manufacturing had accounted for 70 per cent of the transactions as compared to 50 per cent in the previous year. The Chakan-Talegaon cluster has surfaced as the top destination for such transactions accounting for 74 per cent of the transactions.
“Due to the high land prices in Chakan, Talegaon has emerged as an attractive location for both warehousing as well industrial leasing. The Chakan-Talegaon belt has attracted several major occupiers such as IKEA, Amazon, Stellar Value Chain Solutions, etc. Ranjangaon warehousing cluster accounted for 19 per cent of the total transaction volume during the period,” the report read.
“FY 2021 was a challenging year for the warehousing sector in Pune as the extended lockdown during the first wave of the pandemic had a bearing on demand. On the positive side, we are witnessing stronger demand from the industrial segments which made up 66 per cent of transactions.”
~Paramvir Singh Paul, Branch Director, Pune, Knight Frank India
He added, “The industrial demand in Pune, which was earlier concentrated only from the automobile segments, is now coming from diverse sectors. As Pune offers established ecosystem of a mature manufacturing hub almost unparalleled anywhere else in India, we believe that the city is likely to benefit from the ‘China+1’ strategy being adopted by several manufacturers globally.”
