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看看这个，谁能翻一下？
ProLogis
Revolutionizing Distribution In Japan
ProLogis, a U.S. real estate company specializing in providing distribution facilities and services, has transplanted its business model to Japan, where it is steadily growing its operations. ProLogis, founded in 1991, has specialized in constructing or purchasing distribution facilities (mainly warehouses) and leasing them to distribution companies and manufacturers. This late entrant to the field has surged passed its competitors to seize top market share-not only throughout the United States but world-wide.
What underlies its dramatic growth is the ProLogis concept: "We start with customers." By its very nature, the real estate business tends to be highly local, and may real estate companies limit their operations to a given geographical area. But their customers' businesses are expanding globally, and that global spread is generating loud calls for world-wide distribution networks. ProLogis has responded to that challenge, and expanded in the process. Miki Yamada, ProLogis senior vice president and head of its Japan operation, told us, "ProLogis is the only real estate company operating in three regions-the United States, Europe, and Asia."
Trucks Up To The Top Floor
ProLogis founded its Japan unit in 1999. Since then it has steadily built a solid base of operations: as of October 2004, it had opened 14 distribution facilities, or ProLogis Parks, in Japan, and had five more structures under construction. Its ProLogis Parks are of three types. The multi-tenant format is a large-scale multipurpose facility that ProLogis builds to meet a variety of needs and leases to multiple tenant corporations. Its first facility of that type, ProLogis Park Narita, opened near Narita International Airport, which serves Tokyo, in October, 2003. ProLogis now operates three multi-tenant facilities, each incorporating innovative concepts.
ProLogis Park Narita, for example, is exceptional among ProLogis distribution facilities because it is five stories high. Yamada explained that the challenge in designing it was to make effective use of a limited site. "We had headquarters in the US arguing against the multistory design, but when we explained the advantages of building high, they got it," he recalled. To build a multistory building for swift goods handling, ProLogis came up with the concept of building motor vehicle access slopes going all the way up to the top floor, on the ends of the building. The conventional distribution facility takes care of loading and unloading cargo on the first floor, with elevators to haul goods to higher floors. The slopes eliminate much of the time and effort required for moving goods by elevators.
ProLogis Park Tokyo's spiral ramps permit trucks to enter and exit directly at each floor.ProLogis Japan took the concept even further in the next two multi-tenant facilities it built-ProLogis Park Tokyo and ProLogis Park Osaka. They each have seven floors and use separate spiral ramps for motor vehicle entrance and exit. That structure means that it is as convenient to use the top floor as the ground floor. "The slopes and spiral ramps are ideas that hadn't been implemented in earlier distribution facilities. I think it took a specialist like our company to come up with those creative breakthroughs," Yamada commented.
ProLogis Shinkiba was designed and built to DHL Japan's specifications.Built-to-suit facilities are the second type of ProLogis Park-a distribution facility that ProLogis builds for a customer, based on its specific requirements. ProLogis owns the facility and leases it to the customer. It now has five such facilities in operation in Japan, with DHL Japan and Nippon Express as tenants. Acquisitions are the third type: purchase of an existing distribution facility. There are two subtypes in the acquisition category: sale and lease back, in which ProLogis leases the structure to the original owner, and the straight sale type, in which it leases it to a new tenant.
Contributing To Off-Balance-Sheet Solutions
ProLogis's swift expansion in Japan has been boosted by structural changes in the Japanese economy after the collapse of the economic bubble. A market for its innovations was created by corporations' efforts to slash distribution costs as one way to cope with post-bubble economic stagnation. Also, corporations were seeing the shift in land prices affecting their balance sheets. Prior to and during the bubble period, Japan had had a sustained trend of rising land and real estate prices, giving corporations unrealized profits from their ownership of warehouses and other distribution facilities. But when land prices started falling after the bubble burst, those profits turned to unrealized losses. ProLogis offers solutions for both sets of problems.
To help reduce costs, ProLogis builds highly efficient, large-scale facilities and offers the latest in distribution environments at rents comparable to those for conventional facilities, helping companies improve cost effectiveness. And it addresses falling land prices and unrealized losses through acquisitions: when ProLogis buys up a facility, it disappears from the customer company's balance sheet. The decision to move items off-balance sheet means that corporate earnings are not influenced by unrealized losses from real estate. It also makes the company's financial statements more transparent, thereby increasing shareholders' and analysts' confidence in it.
In addition, leasing facilities enables customers to develop more flexible distribution strategies. When a company owns its own distribution facilities, it tends to keep them even if their utilization rates drop. Converting to a leasing system enables it to revise or even cancel leases in a timely manner in response to changes in movement of goods.
Utilizing A Fund
ProLogis, which has no competitors offering the same type of operations in Japan, is continuing to develop swiftly. In total, the 19 facilities it has in operation or under construction thus far provide 760,000 square meters of space. Its target for expansion over the next few years is 300,000 to 500,000 square meters annually. Building 300,000 square meters of distribution facilities requires some ¥50 billion to ¥60 billion in funds. ProLogis, always the innovator, utilizes new methods on the funding side as well.
The heart of its innovative approach is the use of a fund, a Japan investment fund it established in 2002 with joint participation by ProLogis and GIC Real Estate, the property arm of the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation. It as also arranged for a line of credit from a syndicate of domestic and overseas banks. ProLogis uses its borrowings from the line of credit to build facilities, then transfers ownership of them to the fund. The funds realized by that transfer go to repay the loan. With this mechanism in place, it can expand operations without taking on an enormous debt burden. At present, GIC is its only partner in the fund, but it could potentially expand to include other institutional or even individual investors.
Japan has an estimated 480 million square meters of warehouse space today. If ProLogis were to own a 1% share, that would be 4,800,000 square meters. "At our current pace, it will take us about ten years to reach the 4,800,000 square meter mark," Yamada noted. He is ambitious about the future: "Because there is ample room for us to expand operations, we will keep on building new facilities that incorporate customer needs." ProLogis's continuing growth will revolutionize distribution in Japan in the process. |
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发表于 2005-12-13 13:14
