Logistics, endless growth: Italy at the top in Europe

With a seven per cent increase in investments in logistics, Italy confirms itself in first place for growth in Europe. While on the continent the volume of investments, during 2022, was 58 billion euros, with a decrease of fifteen percent compared to the previous year, Italy goes against the tide. Once again in 2022, in fact, the logistics real estate market in our country confirmed the growth trend that has characterized it for some time, exceeding three billion euros in investments and reaching a twenty-five percent share of the total volume, pushing the sector at the top of investors' choices, second only to offices. These are some of the data that emerged today in Milan during the conference THE FUTURE OF LOGISTIC IS NOW during which the "2023 Report on the logistics real estate market" was presented, edited by Scenari Immobiliari in collaboration, for the second consecutive year, with SFRE, a Project & Construction Management company specializing in logistics and light-industrial properties.
The increase in investments in the logistics sector in our country was mainly supported by the progressive consolidation of interest from foreign institutional investors and by the growing pressure exerted by demand with respect to quality spaces located in complementary markets to the main ones. The territorial distribution of investments shows how the importance of northern Italy has strengthened as the country's main area of ​​interest with an absorption equal to 82 per cent of the total (north-west 61 per cent, north-east 21 per cent), with the center trailing behind with 17 percent and the remaining one percent made up of Southern and Island markets. The real estate turnover recorded for the industrial-logistics sector in Italy in 2022 was approximately six billion, up by nine percent on an annual basis and with a forecast for 2023 of substantial stability.
The constant growth of the logistics market in our country has brought the current real estate assets, after developments for just under two million square meters were closed in 2022, to over forty-six million square meters, an increase of 4.5 percent on an annual basis for an estimated value of approximately 2.0 billion euros. At the same time, estimates for 2023 envisage pipeline developments of just under 2.3 million square metres.