August 6, 2012
A private consortium has bought the 297-acre Discovery Park in Sandwich, Kent, which was formerly owned by the pharmaceutical company, Pfizer.
Discovery Park Limited, a special purpose vehicle set up by Trevor Cartner and Chris Musgrave together with Palmer Capital, has acquired the freehold of the site. Discovery Park comprises 3m sq ft of commercial space on 213 acres, including laboratories, offices and warehouses. The remaining 84 acres of the park is used for a combined heat and power plant and processing facilities.
Paul Barber, a former managing director of Priority Sites, the Government regeneration company, will become managing director of Discovery Park Limited.
“This is an exciting project for me and our whole team. We look forward to working with Kent County Council, Locate in Kent and central and local government to secure the long term future of this site.
“Pfizer has taken a lease of around 250,000 sq ft of offices and laboratories and together with our other tenants we have around 1000 people employed on site. We have received several enquiries from companies looking to locate to this site and we will progress these with extreme vigour,” he says.
The Sandwich site is close to Canterbury and 80 miles from London. It boasts strong road and rail links into London, and also has quick connections to continental Europe via the Channel Tunnel and nearby ferry links.
