Box Storage, a Merito Self Storage Fund portfolio company managed by investment company Merito Partners (Merito), has acquired its first property in Vilnius at Laisvės prospektas 62. Merito will invest EUR 4.5 million to transform the retail building into a Box Storage facility with 650 self storage units and a leasable area of at least 3,300 square meters.
The building, constructed in 2000, has an area of 5,150 square meters. Merito will reconstruct the building, keeping the cargo elevator, as well as the rooftop solar power panels to produce green, environmentally friendly energy.
Mārtiņš Baumanis, Partner at Merito: “The demand for self storage premises in the Baltic capitals exceeds supply. Our focus is to acquire and convert existing buildings into specialized, modern storage facilities and to develop the largest self storage facility network in the Baltics. We considered the decision to acquire our first property in Vilnius carefully and are convinced that the location is perfectly suited for a storage facility – it is located adjacent to a busy intersection connecting four densely populated Vilnius districts.”
The Vilnius Box Storage facility like the portfolio’s other self storage buildings in Riga and Tallinn will offer modern technology, including a mobile app providing instant access to the premises, as well as remote online transactions and automatic payment for services. Customers will have 24/7 access to their storage units.
Last autumn, Merito established Merito Self Storage Fund, a specialized real estate fund with a target size of EUR 30 million. The fund aims to secure an additional EUR 50 million in debt co-financing to establish the leading pan-Baltic self storage network within five years. It will consist of 10 to 15 self storage facilities with at least 50,000 square meters of leasable area and over 10,000 individual self storage units.
Merito Self Storage Fund owns the largest self storage facility network in Latvia consisting of three operational buildings and the former “Go Planet” entertainment centre that will be reconstructed and transformed into a self storage facility. There will be 3,700 individual storage units available after the reconstruction of all the premises, with an area of at least 20,000 square meters. The Fund also acquired its first property in Tallinn this summer. A former supermarket building will be transformed into a Box Storage facility with 400 individual storage units and a leasable area of at least 1,500 square meters.
Merito Partners has secured over EUR 8 million in capital from 24 private and institutional investors and is actively continuing to fundraise. Several properties are currently being evaluated across the Baltics, additional assets expected to be acquired in the next months.