JD Property acquired the Rugby project last year (Image: JD Property)
JD Property has opened its latest European logistics facility with a little help from a friend from back home, adding to a UK portfolio which now includes more than a dozen warehouses.
The logistics real estate investment division of China’s JD.com, on Saturday said on its official WeChat account that it has completed a warehouse project in England’s West Midlands region, with that announcement coming just days after UK media had reported the facility as fully leased to a logistics division of Chinese video app TikTok.
Fulfilled by TikTok, which handles storage and shipping for TikTok Shop, is taking up all 23,000 square metres (246,000 square feet) of the property in Rugby, Warwickshire on a 10-year lease, according to an account in CoStar.
“The platform continues to strengthen its service capacity for key industrial and consumer markets in Europe,” said JD Property. “Its partnership with a global leading cross-border e-commerce player demonstrates the enduring appeal of prime logistics assets in core European markets.” JD said in the release that it had established a partnership for the facility with a leading cross-border e-commerce company.
GBP 41M Project
JD has fully leased the property in the heart of the UK’s ‘Golden Triangle’ logistics cluster just over a year after acquiring the project, with local news reports putting a GBP 41,000 million ($54,270 million) price tag on that forward-purchase deal.
Kai–yan Lee, regional CEO for JD Property Europe and the Americas
“This acquisition reflects our continued confidence in the UK and our commitment to supporting our clients and building our businesses in warehouses, logistics and e-commerce,” JD Property said in a statement at the time.
The property has three level access doors and 15 metre clearance heights in addition to being designed to earn an Excellent certification under the UK’s BREEAM standard for sustainable buildings.
Fulfilled by TikTok is paying about GBP 11 per square foot to lease the property, according to CoStar.
JD and TikTok’s parent company ByteDance did not immediately respond to Mingtiandi’s enquiries on the leasing deal.
Leasing Support
The Rugby leasing deal marks the latest milestone for a UK business which JD Property kicked off in 2022 with the acquisition of a 361,000 square foot warehouse in Milton Keynes.
The agreement with Fulfilled by TikTok is not JD Property’s first UK deal with a compatriot company, with AUKLogis, a subsidiary of Shenzhen-based shipping enterprise Western Post, having leased a building at a JD facility at Griffen Park in Leicestershire this summer, according to UK trade media accounts.
In 2025 JD Property leased a building at its Apollo development in Coventry to its sister company, JD Logistics, with Chinese-owned furniture company Daals also taking a full building in the project. In February of this year, JD Logistics took a second full building at the Coventry complex.
Last December, JD Property acquired a partially completed 909,000 square foot logistics campus near Leicester, the largest city in England’s East Midlands region, from London-based logistics developer and fund manager Griffen. Then in April, the company completed its acquisition of a 322,198 square foot (29,933 square metre) distribution centre near Manchester, England, from British supermarket group Asda for GBP 14.2 million.
JD Property now has over 30 logistics facilities totalling more than 850,000 square metres of gross floor area across the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, with overall occupancy of 95 percent, according to its WeChat statement.
The company has also been expanding across the Middle East in recent months, including an agreement last month to develop 150,000 square metres (1.6 million square feet) of warehousing in Abu Dhabi’s KEZAD Al Ma’mourah industrial zone.
As of September, JD Property manages more than 300 assets totalling 28 million square metres, with over $16 billion in assets under management.
