IMMOFINANZ AG has taken over a 90 percent stake in the Dutch self-storage provider City Box. The remaining stakes are held by management, including the company’s founders. City Box is one of the leading companies in the industry and has 14 self-storage facilities with 45,000 m² of total usable space located on the outskirts of the country’s big cities. Occupancy of the 9,000 storage compartments is considerably above the market average.

The Dutch self-storage market also presents excellent opportunities for growth. City Box is planning to open ten additional centres in the next three years in the surroundings of the country’s big cities. “City Box has excellent management and a very good profit outlook,” says IMMOFINANZ Chairman Karl Petrikovics. “Market conditions are similar in several European countries; thus, in the medium term the know-how from City Box can also be put to good use outside the Netherlands.”

For this reason the takeover of City Box is also strategically important. In the next few years IMMOFINANZ will considerably expand its self-storage business. A Europe-wide group aiming for market leadership in continental Europe is to be created through the acquisition of interests in and takeovers of local self-storage companies. In this regard IMMOFINANZ will also be involved outside its core market, the countries in the centre of Europe; by 2010 the portfolio is to include at least 100 facilities. “We are specifically seeking companies with convincing business models with which we can then systematically expand. The generally small-scale structure of the industry facilitates the implementation of this strategy.”

IMMOFINANZ has been on the self-storage market since 2005 with a stake in the Austrian market leader “SelfStorage – Dein Lagerraum”. The company is currently implementing a large-scale expansion programme in Germany and Switzerland, where 30 self-storage facilities are built in locations in all major cities by 2009. In Austria there are now seven facilities in operation, six of them in Vienna.

As in Germany, Petrikovics would like to become the market leader in other countries, too. “We are specifically seeking companies which have a convincing business model and a good product. With the financial power of IMMOFINANZ we can then implement a consistent expansion strategy. The generally small-scale structure of the industry provides a very good basis for this approach.”

Petrikovics anticipates attractive opportunities in the western as well as the eastern part of the continent. “The prices for flats in big cities are increasing throughout Europe and there is less and less storage room for more and more goods which need to be stored for a longer period of time.” Moreover, IMMOFINANZ is the only company aiming to develop a Europe-wide market presence: “The know-how from now four countries will make an appreciable contribution to prevailing on other markets. With the systematic utilisation of synergies and innovative products and services, we can take full advantage of the enormous profit potential.”