Albany data centre up for sale

The property is within Albany Heights Business Park. Photo / Supplied

A secure datacentre property leased to New Zealand's largest domain name and web-hosting company is for sale by auction.

The stratum property, at 30b Arrenway Drive, Albany, will be auctioned at the North Shore office of Colliers International on December 5, unless sold earlier. Marketing brokers Ryan de Zwart and Matt Prentice say it is an opportunity to secure a prime industrial asset with substantial tenant investment into the building's infrastructure.

"The property is occupied by established web services company Umbrellar, which has undertaken significant work to create two secure, temperature-controlled datacentre rooms on site," says de Zwart.

"This functional, modern industrial building is part of a two-unit development in North Shore's sought-after Albany Heights Business Park.

"Quality medium size units like this are rarely offered, especially in a tightly-held location."

The property has a net lettable area of 365sq m, excluding a 200sq m mezzanine covering the datacentres.

It comprises 122sq m of office space over two levels, 243sq m of warehousing, which incorporates the datacentres, and six on-site car parks.

A three-year lease to Arrenway Infrastructure Ltd, which amalgamated with Umbrellar Limited in 2015, earns $80,000 per annum.

Five three-year rights of renewal extend the total lease period to November 2031.

Rental growth is locked in, with fixed rental increases indexed to the Consumer Price Index on renewal.

Prentice says the property is well located on Arrenway Drive, which links Apollo and Triton Drives.

"Apollo Drive is the principal thoroughfare linking Rosedale Rd and Constellation Drive, giving the property excellent accessibility to the wider North Shore area," he says.

"The Northern Motorway is easily accessed via the Greville Rd interchange to the north or the Upper Harbour Highway interchange to the south.

"Recent road improvements mean the travel time to the city is about 15 minutes outside of peak."

"Zoned General Business, the property is part of the Albany Heights Business Park, which has low vacancy rates.

"The Industrial Park is predominantly made up of good to superior quality office and warehouse properties, with ancillary office and retail developments, most of which were built in the late 1990s and early 2000s," Prentice says.

Neighbours include 3M, Rex Bionics, Wallace Cotton, Douglas Johnson, Anzor Fasteners, High-tech Packaging and Penguin Books, among others.

The business park is part of the wider Mairangi Bay Industrial Estate — a relatively new, yet established industrial subdivision.

The broader area is home to the Westfield Albany shopping centre, Event Cinema complex, QBE Stadium, Massey University, and a good range of cafes, restaurants, bars, gyms, and diverse businesses.

Umbrellar is New Zealand's largest domain name and web hosting company, with 75,000 customers and more than 255,000 registered domain names.

The Arrenway Drive property is among its four data centres.

Umbrellar's full-service offering includes cloud hosting, web hosting, domain name management, infrastructure builds, hardware housing, managed hosting, and data backups.

Its services are utilised by small businesses, marketing agencies, web specialists, and large corporate enterprises across New Zealand, Australia and Asia.

The company, dating back to 1997, was formed from the amalgamation of 10 New Zealand domain name and web hosting brands including Digiweb and Web Drive.