Commercial property developer Orbit Developments has completed the first phase of the construction at Academy Business Park in Knowsley.

The speculatively-built distribution centre has been completed to shell consisting of 100,000 sq ft warehousing space and 10,000 sq ft of ground and first floor office accommodation

Orbit celebrated the completion of building one with an exclusive launch event for commercial property agents in May. The building was well received with retained agent Darren Hill, Director for CBRE commenting on the new development:

“Knowsley is a proven location and has excellent communications links being located within minutes of the A580 East Lancashire Road and Junction 4 of the M57.

“The lack of good quality modern stock within both the locality and wider North West region as a whole, combined with the USP’s this unit benefits from including both standard dock levellers and 4 no. high euro dock level loading doors, will ensure it appeals to a wide range of occupiers.”

The accommodation is adjacent to Liverpool Football Club Training Academy and within close proximity to distribution hubs and contact centres for other national business such as Amazon, QVC and Matalan.

The area has benefitted from progressive improvements to industrial property driven by a steady increase in demand. Jon Thorne, Partner at B8 Real Estate commented on the new development:

“The industrial / distribution sector continues to generate good levels of occupier demand driven by the growth of on-line retailing and occupiers striving to improve the efficiency of their supply chain by moving to more modern premises.

We expect this to continue and the North West / Merseyside is also seen as a good location to base operations in so there is a real need to deliver good quality new build space to the market as Orbit are doing at Academy Business Park.”

The easily accessible location close to M57 and M62 motorways, makes the area very attractive to distribution businesses looking for a strategic north west base close to the key shipping destination Liverpool Superport and also Liverpool and Manchester airports.

Orbit Developments Divisional Director for Merseyside, Dennis Dwyer commented:

“We are pleased to confirm that this first phase of development is ready for an end user and we will be carrying out inspections with interested parties.  Our launch event was well received by over 35 of the North Wests leading Industrial agents.  The feedback was extremely positive and we look forward to progressing to a successful letting of this phase 1 of development.

“This first phase of development at Academy Business Park, Knowsley has been carried out to satisfy the growing demand within the North West for this type and size of property. A second phase of development is already planned of an identical size and we look forward to moving on shortly to this next stream of development”

The joint agents for the scheme are CBRE and B8 Real Estate.