The industrial panel at the annual property conference CEDES 2016, which took place this year on April 20 at the Radisson Hotel in Bratislava, was moderated by Robert Daniš from Wilson & Partners. Robert is a regular speaker at many of the most prestigious real estate conferences in Slovakia.
He pushed the other speakers to debate whether the plans for the new Jaguar plant in Slovakia will automatically result in new business from new clients for industrial developers, and the growing importance of e-commerce to the sector’s health. Panelists also discussed the increasing difficulty of securing planning for warehouse projects in Slovakia, though the consensus seemed to be that this situation hasn’t deteriorated as far as it has in the Czech Republic. Robert Daniš also looked into the topic of the distribution business, the behavior of manufacturers, suppliers. He said on the subject: “We’ve noticed changes in the behavior of producers, companies have chosen a different approach to obtaining the components through outsourcing.” The developers on the panel agreed that the rise of outsourcing among suppliers of large industrial concerns such as automobile manufacturers was proving to be an enormously important driver of demand for industrial space.
The panel’s other members were Martin Baláž (Prologis), Tomáš Budař (CTP) and Martin Hudák (Cushman & Wakefield).
Following the panel discussion, Daniš led a Q&A session with the audience which focused on rent levels, and whether low vacancy in Slovakia was pushing up rents for tenants. The panelists agreed that prices in the regional cities because of lower competition there, but claimed that rents around Bratislava were generally stable.
The conference, organized by CIJ each year in the Slovak capital, brings together key players on the Slovak property sector to discuss the most pressing and topical themes facing the industry.
