Amazon up against City of London Corporation in Barking Power Station acquisition

Global online retail giant Amazon and the City of London Corporation are going head to head for the purchase of Barking Power station in East London in a bidding war that has now exceeded the £100 million mark. The 42-acre site closed for operations in 2014, and the firms are looking to purchase it with very different developments in mind.

The City of London Corporation has revealed it would use the site to combine its three food markets currently located at Billingsgate, Smithfield and New Spitalfields, while Amazon wants to establish a huge new distribution centre (2 million sq ft over four floors — the first four-storey DC in the UK) that would be ideally placed for serving the ever-growing London market.

According to a senior agent, “The City of London Corporation is very keen on the site as sites of this size and location are very hard to come by…The value they will release at the three markets in the City by turning them into huge commercial schemes is massive, so you would think they would do all they can to land this site. But then they are up against Amazon, which is desperate to find sites as close to central London as possible to build its multi-storey centres.”

This news was brought to you by Morgan Pryce, a specialist tenant acquisition agent with offices in Oxford Circus and the City. Morgan Pryce specialises in search, negotiation and project management and works exclusively for tenants.