“We are finding much greater value in Johannesburg assets,” said Rael Levitt, founder and CEO of Inospace. “The Cape Town market is not a yield play at the moment, and it feels a little too frothy. We believe Johannesburg will turn the corner, hopefully after the municipal elections, and that there is material value still to be unlocked there.”
The Hellmann Building sale gives Inospace a fifth property in the Kempton Park node, adding to four parks it already owns around OR Tambo International Airport. At 48 Electron Avenue, the site sits directly next to Electron Exchange, which Inospace has owned since 2021, and fronts the R24 highway, one of the area's main freight and commuter routes. The property has a total land size of 9,518m² and a gross lettable area of 8,322m², and is an A-grade warehouse with executive offices and a 12-metre eaves height. Hellmann, the building's namesake occupant, will remain on as a tenant for now, and Inospace plans to convert part of the site into micro-warehousing once integration work is complete.
“We have real confidence in the OR Tambo node,” Levitt said. “The Hellmann Building gives us direct visibility onto the R24 and sits right alongside one of our most successful parks. It lets us consolidate our footprint around the airport and back the growth we're already seeing in the portfolio.”
The deal follows Inospace's recent acquisitions in Wadeville, Germiston and Wynberg, Sandton part of a broader push into Johannesburg funded by a period of disposals in Cape Town, where the group has been selling selected industrial assets and redirecting the proceeds north.
Inospace said its Gauteng portfolio had recorded double-digit rental growth over the period and pointed to a reversal in the semigration trend that has for years drawn households and businesses from Gauteng to the coast. More households are now returning inland, the group said, with affordability a major draw: property prices and rentals in Johannesburg remain lower than in Cape Town, letting businesses secure larger or better-located sites for the same budget.
David Bernstein, group MD of Inospace, said the Hellmann Building would be run as a single operation with Electron Exchange rather than as a standalone asset. “Sharing a boundary means shared access, shared services and a single management footprint across the two sites from day one,” he said. “The eaves height and yard give us flexibility as we bring micro-warehousing into the mix.”
Inospace operates more than 50 parks and lets space to over 2,100 SME tenants across Cape Town and Johannesburg. The Hellmann Building deal follows the group's acquisition of Charron Park in Wadeville earlier this year. Taken together, the deals mark a deliberate, contrarian tilt toward Johannesburg at a time when much of the market remains focused on the coast.
