A complex legal deal has seen a 6.7 acre industrial site in County Durham sold to Carillion by South Yorkshire headquartered K. Hartwall for £1.1m.
The Spennymoor site was a former manufacturing facility, historically part of the Tinsley Wire Group’s UK facilities, previously known as the Tornado Works, which formed the basis of a complex legal sale by Wake Smith Solicitors on behalf of K. Hartwall.
The site will now face the future as a residential development which will complement the Spennymoor Regeneration Masterplan, the largest mixed-use regeneration scheme in the north east of England.
Neil Salter, director at Wake Smith, said: “We were appointed by the UK arm of K. Hartwall on the disposal of this property in 2012.
“Wake Smith first acted for K Hartwall when it acquired the business of Bekaert Handling around 10 years ago and we still act for Betafence, which company-acquired another long standing client, Tinsley Wire, following its take-over by the Bekaert Group.
“We entered into a promotion agreement with the Carillion Arlington Spennymoor Trust in 2012 to maximize the planning potential and saleability of the site and then earlier this year, K Hartwall agreed a revised deal with Carillion. We were able to advise our client and achieve a further revision, whereby the whole of the price would be paid over on completion.
“There was also the provision of an overage deed to allow K Hartwall to share in any material uplift in receipts from the residential development on site. As we always do on sales of industrial land, we provided within the agreement that all environmental responsibilities potentially associated with the site’s past industrial use are passed on to the purchaser.
“Once the deal was agreed with Carillion, we actually concluded the transaction swiftly, despite the deal presenting some initial legal complexities, by dealing pragmatically and co-operatively with Carillion’s lawyers.”
The Spennymoor site is the last UK owned property to be disposed of by international logistics specialist, K. Hartwall, which retains its UK headquarters at Thorncliffe Park Industrial Estate in Sheffield’s Chapeltown.
Chris Sampson, from K. Hartwall, said: “We are pleased to announce the sale of a disused industrial site in the north-east of England to Carillion, which will now be used for Spennymoor’s much needed residential development.
“This deal has taken several years, as is often the nature of such a transaction, but we are delighted with the legal advice we were given by Wake Smith in the pursuit of maximising our return on the sale.”
Wake Smith has a strong track record of managing commercial property transactions and maintains a team of 11 professionals handling cases of all sizes across the UK.
