Infrastructure & Projects

This Ex­pert Guide is part of Ex­CEEd­ing Bor­ders 2020 Re­port CMS and So­rain­en have provided a coun­try-by-coun­try guide to un­der­stand­ing and com­par­ing what in­cent­ives are po­ten­tially avail­able to In­dus­tri­al&Lo­gist­ics...

Col­li­ers In­ter­na­tion­al­Luke Dawson - Man­aging Dir­ect­or & Head of Cap­it­al Mar­kets, CEEThe In­dus­tri­al&Lo­gist­ics (I&L) prop­erty sec­tor has ris­en out of the shad­ows over the last few years to be­come one of the most dy­nam­ic and stra­tegic­ally im­port­ant sec­tors in our eco­nom­ies and the com­mer­cial real es­tate sec­tor, on a glob­al basis. The I&L sec­tor is by no means a new kid on the block and for people out­side of this in­dustry, it may well largely go un­noticed as products and ser­vices are seem­ingly ma­gic­ally pro­duced and ap­pear in shops and on our door­steps. Be­hind the scenes, there is of course a gi­gant­ic sec­tor made up of man­u­fac­tur­ers, sup­pli­ers, re­tail­ers, 3PLs, dis­trib­ut­ors, stor­age and sup­ply chain com­pan­ies to name just a few, and they lit­er­ally touch any busi­ness or in­dustry sec­tor that you can pos­sibly ima­gine. In ad­di­tion to that, there are sev­er­al highly ex­per­i­enced, glob­al, re­gion­al and loc­al in­vestors and de­velopers that provide the li­on’s share of the prop­er­ties to make all this pos­sible.In this re­port, we look at how the I&L sec­tor has de­veloped in the geo­graph­ic­ally and macro-eco­nom­ic­ally stra­tegic re­gion of Cent­ral&East­ern Europe (CEE). We will also touch on some of the trends fa­cing the sec­tor, both from a prop­erty point of view, as well as from oc­cu­pi­er and con­sumer led stand­points. To­geth­er with our part­ners, we also provide valu­able in­sight in­to im­port­ant loc­a­tion se­lec­tion de­cision-mak­ing cri­ter­ia around la­bour mar­kets, tax and in­cent­ives offered to in­vestors con­sid­er­ing this re­gion.This re­port cov­ers a range of top­ics across 17 coun­tries in the wider CEE re­gion and as a res­ult, we have close to 100 pages of in­sights to share with you. There­fore, we would not ex­pect you to con­sume this all in one sit­ting and we hope this will be a use­ful tool longer term as you re­view the op­por­tun­it­ies in this great re­gion. Last, but not least, you can­not ig­nore the ele­phant in the room that is COV­ID-19. This pan­dem­ic that we are still very much in, has only con­firmed the stra­tegic im­port­ance and need for this sec­tor in un­cer­tain times, but has also high­lighted some areas for re­flec­tion. We hope you find this re­port use­ful and, wheth­er you are an in­vestor, de­veloper, oc­cu­pi­er or oth­er in­ter­ested party in the I&L sec­tor, we look for­ward to dis­cuss­ing your out­look and plans with you fur­ther.CMS and So­rain­en­Lu­kas Hej­duk - Part­ner, Head of CEE Real Es­tateOver re­cent dec­ades, coun­tries in the wider Cent­ral and East­ern Europe re­gion have at­trac­ted sig­ni­fic­ant levels of for­eign in­vest­ments. The well-edu­cated la­bour forces and lower la­bour costs than in West­ern Europe, rap­idly de­vel­op­ing in­fra­struc­ture with good trans­port links to the rest of Europe, tax ex­emp­tions and pref­er­ences for in­vestors, are only some of the reas­ons why nu­mer­ous com­pan­ies have de­cided to open man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­it­ies and dis­tri­bu­tion centres in CEE.CMS and So­rain­en have provided their col­lect­ive know­ledge and ex­per­i­ence which is in­ten­ded to help po­ten­tial In­dus­tri­al&Lo­gist­ics in­vestors un­der­stand what in­cent­ives are avail­able when seek­ing to start op­er­a­tions in one or more of the 17 CEE coun­tries covered in this re­port. As there are vari­ous levels of sup­port across CEE, the fol­low­ing guide is presen­ted in a coun­try-by-coun­try format. It is not meant to be com­pre­hens­ive and gives more of a gen­er­al, in­dic­at­ive pic­ture. As laws and reg­u­la­tions can change quickly, it is vi­tal to seek pro­fes­sion­al ad­vice at an early stage if you de­cide to green light an in­vest­ment.Rand­stad­Paweł Ko­peć - Head of En­ter­prise Solu­tions CenterThe CEE re­gion has al­ways been among the first des­tin­a­tions in the minds of for­eign in­vestors, from the pro­duc­tion and lo­gist­ics sec­tors, when look­ing for sav­ings on per­son­nel costs and avail­ab­il­ity of the work­force. Over the years, la­bour mar­ket con­di­tions across the CEE coun­tries has changed rap­idly and, in some coun­tries, un­em­ploy­ment rates have fallen be­low levels that any­one could have pre­dicted a few years back, reach­ing nat­ur­al un­em­ploy­ment rates.Des­pite some of these factors, the CEE re­gion re­mains very at­tract­ive and has a lot to of­fer. Not only there are dif­fer­ences in la­bour avail­ab­il­ity and costs between the vari­ous coun­tries, there are also sig­ni­fic­ant dif­fer­ences between spe­cif­ic counties and cit­ies in the giv­en coun­try. New in­vestors will of course tend to feel more se­cure loc­at­ing their busi­nesses in areas already ex­plored by oth­er com­pan­ies, but those who take the risk and be­come pi­on­eers in less in­dus­tri­al­ized areas, may well be re­war­ded with loy­al per­son­nel and less work­force short­ages. In this re­port, we share our views on the vari­ous la­bour mar­ket con­di­tions and trends across the re­gion.25%me­di­um25%me­di­um25%me­di­um25%me­di­um

After an ini­tial wave of eu­phor­ia at the pro­spect of see­ing autonom­ous vehicles (AVs) on our streets and the as­so­ci­ated op­por­tun­it­ies and new busi­ness mod­els that AVs could cre­ate, there is now more real­ism...