Blair Welch, co-founding partner of Slate Asset Management, was recently interviewed by Don Wilcox of RENX about the company's recent acquisition of the Commercial Real Estate Business of New York-based Annaly Capital Management. As part of the deal, we also acquired $0.4 billion of grocery-anchored real estate assets across the US. These were purchased by Slate Grocery REIT (TSX: SGR.UN). What some of you maybe don't know, though, is how we as a company view these kinds of assets as being essential food infrastructure, more so than as being retail assets. So here are a few excerpts from the article and quotes from Blair that explain why, in our view, this distinction matters.
“We started buying grocery-anchored real estate in a big way in the financial crisis and I think we always looked at grocery-anchored real estate as food logistics, rather than a retail play,” Welch explained. “In the pandemic it’s really proven the local food store, or the spoke in the hub, is just as valuable as the hub itself.”
Despite an increase in online grocery shopping (to about 10 per cent in the U.S.), people are still going to the stores. Or, at least, (are) getting their products from the local stores. Again, think “food logistics.”
