A global manufacturer of professional coffee machines is moving into a newly completed warehouse on one of the UK’s leading industrial estates in the Black Country – its first move in the UK operation’s 85-year history.
Evoca has agreed a 15-year lease on a 40,000 sq ft unit at Prime Point, a £1.5 million speculative development by national commercial property and investment company LCP at its flagship Pensnett Estate in Kingswinford.
The company has been based at its Bilston factory since 1934 and manufacturing ceased on the site a number of years ago, hence the requirement to move to a custom-designed and built unit to help the company increase productivity in their product customisation, warehousing and logistics operations.
Hervé Donneaud, UK managing director of Evoca, said its existing site was no longer suitable for its current operations, which serves the vending, office coffee and HORECA markets with coffee machines and vending equipment.
“Re-locating from a traditional factory environment will allow the company to offer an enhanced service to our customers as well as improving efficiency by streamlining the internal work processes and improving access for inbound and outbound transport logistics,” he said.
“It will help us to achieve our growth objectives and capitalise on the booming out of home coffee sector. The creation of a custom-designed, modern and bright showroom will also be crucial to the company’s future commercial success – by creating a display area that can truly present the theatre of coffee and demonstrate the capabilities and benefits of the machines to best effect. Simply put, we want to be more customer centric and build on the success of a simple and robust concept: customer first.”
Paula James, industrial lettings manager at LCP, said the deal with Evoca means that phase one of the scheme, which comprises four units with a total of 130,000 sq ft of space, is fully let. Prime Point is the first speculative building project LCP has undertaken since 2014, when it created Progress Point at the industrial estate.
“We embarked on our ambitious speculative development of Prime Point because we knew there was a real need for premium quality industrial units of this size in the area,” she said.
“The interest we’ve had in the development bears this out and we’re pleased that the hard work by us and our marketing agents has helped to secure Evoca, another global name, as the occupier for the final unit of phase one.”
Matt Tilt, director of industrial agency at LSH, joint agents for Prime Point, said: “This is the final unit at Prime Point phase one and we’re delighted that we were able to secure another global company of the quality of Evoca. The calibre of enquiries we’ve had at Prime Point and the success of Phase 1 indicates that the development is much needed.
“It has been an extremely successful development with good rents reflecting the quality of the buildings delivered by the landlord. Take-up of the four new units has been quick.”
The Black Country Local Enterprise Partnership (BCLEP) has been supporting LCP with the development. Prime Point sits within DY5, Dudley’s business and innovation enterprise zone, which qualifies occupiers for benefits, including up to £55,000 a year business rate discount over a five-year period.
The Pensnett Estate is one of the largest secure business estates in Europe, and home to 160 businesses in over 2.4 million sq ft of commercial property.
