Blackstone to spend $926m for Japanese warehouses

Blackstone Group has plans to spend $926 million on a portfolio of distribution centers in Japan, reported media outlets.

The seller was a Mapletree-sponsored private equity real estate fund, MJLD, which closed in 2014 with $470 million.

The portfolio consists of six logistics properties, with five located in the Greater Tokyo area and in Odaware, a city southwest of Tokyo. Assets include Amazon’s fulfilment center for the Greater Tokyo area, a two-building facility in the city of Odawara.

Japan is ranked as the world’s fourth-largest e-commerce market following China, the United States, and the United Kingdom. And it is expected to grow 4 percent this year.

Amazon and Rakuten, an electronic commerce and internet company, occupy a huge portion of the business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce marketplace share in Japan. Rakuten provides a variety of services including mobile payments, online banking, insurance, online travel booking, music streaming, video