Chinese warehousing developer and operator e-Shang announced on Thursday that Dutch pension fund asset manager APG will commit up to $650 million for an approximately 20 percent stake in the company and the creation of a strategic joint venture.

It is the third round of investment e-Shang has secured, after it raised a $120 million pre-IPO loan from Goldman Sachs last December. To date, e-Shang has raised over $1 billion of equity capital.

E-Shang was founded in 2011 by global private equity firm Warburg Pincus and two local entrepreneurs. It currently owns over 1.5 million square meters of completed and ongoing projects in China. The company focuses on developing institutional quality warehouses as well as providing logistics services from prime locations across greater Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou as well as several second-tier cities.

Jeffrey Perlman, Executive Director of Warburg Pincus, said APG’s investment and the recent financing from Goldman Sachs mean that e-Shang is well positioned to more than triple the size of its portfolio over the next several years.

Sachin Doshi, head of non-listed real estate for Asia-Pacific at APG, said, "We are delighted to partner with e-Shang and Warburg Pincus on this exciting venture. We have watched this sector closely over the last few years and this investment is consistent with our strategy to gain the right exposure to the Chinese logistics real estate market."

He also said the company believes the logistics real estate sector in China will be a long term beneficiary of trends such as continued growth of third party logistics, e-commerce, the evolution of domestic consumption patterns - and a severe shortage in the supply of modern logistics facilities.

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