The sale has been achieved in collaboration with CataCap, which is the majority shareholder in the DAFA group, which specializes in products and solutions for sealing, protection and sound reduction. The solutions include e.g. products for the wind and construction industry as well as a wide range of other industries. Together with co-investors Schroders Capital and Bluester Capital, both long-term investors in CataCap's funds, CataCap acquired industrial company DAFA Group in 2022.

DAFA Group was founded in 1939 by Børge Norby and has been family-owned until CataCap took over the company. DAFA Group is today a global player with offices in eight countries and more than 320 employees.

Frederik Busch, who is a director at CataCap and has acted as 'lead' on the transaction, says that DAFA Group has sold its buildings as part of the strategy for DAFA:

"We have a long-term focus on optimizing and developing DAFA and have a plan to stay in the current buildings for a long time. We therefore partnered with Colliers to sell the property in a sale-leaseback transaction, as they have extensive experience in this segment. Due to changes in the market along the way, we had to change buyers and the process took longer than expected, but we still ended up with good terms and a strong buyer, so we are happy with the result. With the sale, we have optimized our capital structure and from here we will focus on optimizing and developing the production and sales of our products, while there are others who run real estate investments.”

SF Management is the buyer of the property, and the process has been driven by Investment Director Jacob Bruun Borring. The purchase takes place as part of the strategy that the company has for its investors within storage, logistics and production.

Sale-leaseback in particular has great interest from production and logistics companies as well as investors. This is according to partner in Colliers, Anders Holm, who has been responsible for the team that has advised the seller in connection with the sale of the property.

"Most companies are aware of the advantages of doing a sale-leaseback on their properties, and at the same time the demand from both national and international investors is very strong within this segment. This also means that the prices for this type of property are quite good, and it is clearly the most liquid segment within real estate investments at the moment. In connection with the sale of DAFA's property, we have experienced great interest from a wide range of buyers," he says.

The demand from investors applies both to new logistics properties but also to older properties in Denmark.

"We find that investors are increasingly interested in this type of property also in places other than Copenhagen, i.a. because the pricing of properties with leases with a relatively long non-cancellation period and located in the province provides an attractive return on the invested capital, even at the current interest rate level. Therefore, many investors are open to a greater geographical spread than 18 months ago. Provided the selling company is of reasonable quality, there are no restrictions on sale-leaseback transactions in terms of geographic location. There are - seen from a historical perspective - really good prices if the seller can agree to enter into a long-term lease, which we have also seen with several other cases in which we have brokered the sale of the past 12 months," says Anders Holm.

Alongside this transaction, Colliers has also assisted the owners of DAFA Group with a sale-leaseback transaction of a property located in Poland in the summer of 2023.

The sale of DAFA's head office has been handled by Colliers' Capital Markets team in Aarhus and Copenhagen in collaboration with Accura and KPMG. The buyer has been advised by Gorrissen Federspiel, Deloitte and Rambøll.