Cromwell Polish Retail Fund steps up 2021 GRESB score
06/12/2021
Real estate investor and fund manager, Cromwell Property Group (Cromwell) has announced the Cromwell Polish Retail Fund (CPRF) received a GRESB score of 85 for 2021, an increase of 42 points since first reporting in 2014.
CPRF contains seven catchment-dominating shopping centres strategically located across Poland. Three of the shopping centres have undergone significant redevelopment and refurbishment including the award-winning Janki Shopping Centre’s €65 million expansion which added 21,000 sqm of net lettable area, allowing a more diversified tenant mix between retail and leisure.
Cromwell’s Head of ESG, Claire George, commented, “Year-on-year, Cromwell continues to actively seek out new and innovative ways in which we can reduce the environmental impact of our activity and funds to meet investor needs. The improvement in our GRESB score over the past seven years is just the latest example of how we are making continuous improvements across our assets to align with evolving investor demands and is an excellent achievement for the team in Poland.”
Magdalena Piechna, Fund Manager, CPRF added, “Over a number of years, the team has made great strides in improving the CPRF GRESB score, with this year’s score of 85 almost doubling its original 2014 result. This achievement is testament to the efforts of the whole team in Central and Eastern Europe and illustrative of the group’s commitment to improving sustainability across the assets we manage.”
In CEE, Cromwell has over 45 real estate professionals and, as at 30 June 2021, managed €1.1 billion of office, retail and logistics and light industrial assets let to over 570 tenant-customers, covering over 787,000 sqm in Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia.
About GRESB
Launched in 2009, GRESB is an investor-driven global ESG benchmark and reporting framework for listed property companies, private property funds, developers and investors that invest directly in real estate.
Participation in the benchmark grew by 24% this year, to 1,520. This is the highest percentage increase the assessment has seen since 2012 and the highest ever increase in total numbers. The benchmark now covers $5.7 trillion of AUM (up from $4.8 trillion) and nearly 117,000 individual assets.
Growth has been driven mainly by Europe, which saw massive growth for the second year in a row and now accounts for nearly half of the entire benchmark. High continued growth in Europe is likely driven by both investor interest in ESG data and the industry’s focus on and attention to emerging regulations. The group of listed entities grew by 20% while the non-listed group grew by 25%. GRESB measures and ranks public disclosure practices of participating listed entities on an annual basis. Categories assessed include sustainability governance, sustainability implementation, operational performance and stakeholder engagement practices.