Irish food firm snaps up former Co-op site

The 99,000 sq ft Amber Way property was built in the mid 1970s and sites on a four acre site, providing storage from frozen foods. The price tag on the deal has not been revealed and Dawn Meats has not commented on whether the move will create new jobs.

It was shut down by the Co-op as part of a modernisation and rationalisation programme at its national distribution network in 2012, with the loss of 250 jobs. The work was consolidated into a new 500,000 sq ft regional centre at Castlewood, beside Junction 28 of the M1.

Isla Roebuck, managing director of Dawn UK, said: "This property addition for Dawn Meats represents an excellent value alternative for freezing, distribution, and storage of our products, and brings the security and integrity of our customer products in house. Its central location and motorway access is ideal to service our customers and plants across the UK."

Geoff Player, director of commercial & investment property with The Co-operative Estates, said: "This is our 11th major freehold industrial property sale since we kicked off our UK warehouses campaign in 2013 and leaves only one freehold property remaining from our legacy distribution estate.

"We have capitalised on the good level of demand for large second hand industrial space driven by the lack of speculative development over the last five to six years."

Mark Fitzpatrick, Associate at GVA who – along with lead agents Colliers International – acted on behalf of The Co-operative Estates in the sale, commented: "The property attracted good levels of interest in the latter part of the marketing from both occupiers able to utilise the exisiting frozen facility, and occupiers looking to remove the freezers from the building and utilise the property as a traditional distribution building."

Based in Waterford in Ireland, Dawn Meats processes cattle and lamb supplied by 5,000 UK farmers, running processing facilities at six sites across the UK.