Prologis says e-commerce drives surge in warehouse demand

The world’s largest warehouse developer and owner yesterday released its annual results showing record returns on the back of increased demand due to the rise in e-commerce supply chains. Its “core funds for operations”, its main financial metric, increased 19% over the course of the year to reach $1.2bn, while the occupancy rate across its global locations reached a record 97%. Chief executive Hamid Moghadam said growth had mostly been spurred by e-commerce customers who, because each individual shipment to end consumers has to be separately packaged, typically require three times more stage space than goods shipping on pallets.