Warburg Pincus, a leading global private equity firm focused on growth investing, and Becamex IDC Corp, the construction and development giant in Viet Nam, officially launched their joint venture BW Industrial Development Joint Stock Company on Tuesday.
With an area spreading over two million sq.m and an initial investment capital of over US$200 million, BW Industrial is the largest ‘for-rent’ industrial and logistics developer in Viet Nam.
In particular, BW Industrial will focus on supporting the sustainable development of Viet Nam. They are a strategic investor in the global supply chain. With the mission of providing value-added services to other industries through BW Industrial joint ventures, the company ensures to provide the best and most modern real estate solutions for investors in different fields such as mechanical manufacturing, electronics, automobile manufacturing, garments and footwear.
BW Industrial was seeded with eight projects across five cities in each of Viet Nam’s strategic industrial hubs in the North and South, including Binh Duong, Dong Nai, Hai Phong, Hai Duong and Bac Ninh. According to the plan, BW will build the foundations of industrial real estate and logistics services to meet the needs of multinational corporations as well as e-commerce companies in Viet Nam.
Jeffrey Perlman, managing director and head of the Southeast Asia division of Warburg Pincus, said, with a sizable population of nearly 100 million people and an increasingly diversified economy, manufacturing and domestic consumption had become the central areas of growth for Viet Nam. This was an ideal time to tap into these growth opportunities with the goal of taking Viet Nam’s industrial and logistics value chain to the next level, he added.
According to Nguyen Van Hung, chairman of Becamex IDC, Becamex contributes only 30 per cent of capital in this joint venture. It is also the policy that Binh Duong Province wants to call for investors to invest in, build for the socio-economic development of the locality. This is also a priority for profit sharing for investors.
Established in 1976, Becamex specialises in developing large-scale industrial townships with one of the largest industrial landbanks in key markets across Viet Nam. Becamex has formed a number of partnerships with foreign players such as Tokyu Corporation, a major Tokyo-based infrastructure developer, and Sembcorp, a Temasek-sponsored industrial group through the Viet Nam Singapore Industrial Park platform (VSIP), which is now widely recognised as one of the most successful industrial park developers in Viet Nam, with over $10 billion of investments to-date.
Warburg Pincus started investing in Southeast Asia in 2013 with Viet Nam as its maiden market. Since then, Warburg Pincus has committed over $1 billion in the region, including in Vincom Retail, Lodgis Hospitality, ARA Asset Management, Go-Jek, NWP, Trax, and others. Currently, the firm has more than $44 billion in private equity assets under management. — VNS