Chinese technology giant Huawei has put up for sale a major 513-acre Cambridge industrial, life sciences, residential and data centre development opportunity where it had been proposing to build a £1 billion research centre.
Knight Frank has been appointed on Cambridge Campus, a property expected to sell for more than £65 million.
Huawei bought the Cambridge site for £37 million in 2018 with planning permission secured for a cutting edge optoelectronics research centre in 2020. But its ambitions for expansion hit the buffers after the United Kingdom government revealed that it intended to ban so-called “high-risk vendors” from future 5G network rollouts.
The move followed various United States sanctions and security concerns around the role of the Chinese firm in United Kingdom networks. The ban started to come into force at the end of December 2020 and the removal of existing equipment must be complete by 2027.
The freehold site houses two let industrial buildings producing an income of £1.82 million off reversionary rents of £5.38 per square foot. In addition, there are a number of zones for further development across the site.
The land is six miles to the south of Cambridge city centre and close to the city's Biomedical Campus. As a logistics location it is under 3 miles from the M11. The site has immediate development potential for 20 acres comprising existing vacant industrial buildings and an area of lapsed planning consent for a 540,000-square-foot lab building.
There is a further 140 acres that could be developed subject to obtaining planning consent. Part of this is green belt and part is other areas of existing buildings and development.
The site includes Sawston Business Park, vacant existing industrial and agricultural buildings, agricultural land and woodland. Sawston Business Park comprises 28 acres and 338,839 square feet of industrial, logistics and R&D space across two buildings, as well as 260,761-square-foot gross external area of derelict industrial buildings for redevelopment.
The site is home to two business critical headquarter units providing a total rent of £1,822,359 per annum. The tenant line-up comprises HWC Logistics and Northwest Biotherapeutics providing a weighted average unexpired lease term of 5.1 years to breaks and 10.1 years to expiries.
There is also a Farm Business Tenancy covering 304 acres, expiring in September 2027, subject to a rolling break option.
There is further brownfield land to the south of the site, housing the former Spicers paper manufacturing facilities, offering an additional 47 acres with over 72,000-square-foot gross external area of existing vacant buildings for short to medium term commercial development.
KF says Cambridge Campus provides the opportunity to develop the largest data centre facility in the United Kingdom.
The site is adjacent to the village of Whittlesford, offering, KF says, an "excellent opportunity for residential development, supported by a significant shortage of housing in Cambridgeshire".