Real Estate

The Sihot Park story

One of the largest logistics and light industry parks in Central Eastern Europe.

Sihot Park is the realisation of a decade long vision

Sihot Park is the realisation of a decade long vision of local Slovak businessmen to create a major new logistics park in a prime location adjacent to a major transportation artery north of the capital Bratislava.  They earmarked half a million square metres of agricultural land for the project, but it was owned in small parcels by more than a thousand individuals and after a number of years the project failed due to issues over legal ownership and regulatory planning.

Sisban saw the vision, acquired the project at a competitively low price and made it a reality.  Working patiently and diligently with the Slovak government and others over several years we overcame the problems and obtained permission to build a light industry and logistics park of 160,000 sqm.  Construction started in 2019 and the first phase hall of 36,000 sqm was completed within 12 months.  The hall is now fully occupied by grade A tenants, mostly well-known international companies, who are paying premium rents for space in the high quality and technologically advanced facility.

Type

Logistics Park

Founded

2018

Location

Slovakia

Remarkable Impacts

The park is located nearby Chocholna, which was previously a sleepy village with nothing apart from a struggling agricultural community. Sihot Park has brought a positive impact through economic regeneration to the village and surrounding areas due to the large numbers of people involved in working at it and providing support services to it.

Sihot Park was constructed using the latest German building techniques and sustainable materials and technologies. These lower running costs for tenants and have set a new benchmark for environmentally friendly construction in Slovakia which other developers will be pressured to follow and positively impact the construction sector in CEE.

Central Eastern Europe (CEE) is an area of the EU that has been marked out for special industrial and infrastructure investment but generally lacks funding. It is particularly starved of investment from the Middle East due to concerns over the lack of ease of doing business in CEE.  As a result of Sisban’s ground breaking investment in Slovakia, demonstrating how such a project can be not just successfully executed but also sold for profit, there is potential for heavy future investment from GCC investors.  Sisban is already being approached by the Slovak government about future lucrative projects and we now plan create a new Sisban fund for GCC investors to share in our success and together make a positive impact on CEE development.

Ali Al-Shareef, Group CEO of Sisban says:

“We are delighted to finally make this challenging project a reality. Many people in Slovakia said it could not be done, but with patience and value added thinking we managed to overcome the obstacles and so this is a truly rewarding moment for the whole team.”