• Asset: 1 Brewer Road, Canning Vale WA 6155, about 13 kilometres south of the Perth CBD
• Price: about $16.15 million (as reported by realestatesource)
• Site area: 21,729 sqm (about 2.17 hectares)
• Building: a 4,309 sqm workshop completed in 2019, with 10-tonne and 25-tonne gantry cranes plus rooftop solar
• Site cover: roughly 20 per cent
• Surplus land: about 9,500 sqm of unencumbered, developable land outside the lease, with more than 85 metres of frontage to Brewer Road
• Tenant: VEEM Ltd (ASX: VEE)
• Buyer: Willer Property, through the Willer Brewer Industrial Trust
• Agent: Geoff Thomson, Knight Frank
• Method: off-market
• Lease term, rent and yield: not disclosed

The street name is not a coincidence. Until 2016 the Brewer Road holding was part of a larger site owned by Swan Brewery, one of the best-known names in Western Australian industry. Once that land was broken up, the parcel became available for a new generation of industrial users.

The workshop on site was completed in 2019. It is a serious piece of industrial kit rather than a generic shed. Two gantry cranes rated at 10 and 25 tonnes point to heavy fabrication and assembly work, the kind of capability that is expensive to replicate and hard to find in established suburbs closer to the city.

VEEM has deep roots in Canning Vale. The business started in 1968 as an engineering partnership in nearby Willetton and moved its operations to Canning Vale in 1998, where its head office remains on Baile Road. It listed on the ASX in 2016 and is known for marine propellers, its VEEM Gyro range of ship stabilisers and work on defence programs. In 2020 the company opened a 4,000 sqm gyro assembly hall on Brewer Road, which gives a sense of how important this pocket of Canning Vale is to its operations.

Canning Vale is one of Perth's main southern industrial precincts and it is effectively built out. New supply is limited, vacancy is low and large sites rarely come up. When they do, they tend to trade quietly.

The location does a lot of the work. The precinct has direct access to Roe Highway, Tonkin Highway, Kwinana Freeway, Leach Highway and South Street. That puts occupiers within easy reach of Perth Airport, Fremantle Port and the Kewdale Intermodal Freight Terminal, which is exactly what manufacturers, distributors and trade businesses need.

The wider numbers back this up. Cushman & Wakefield's latest MarketBeat puts overall Perth industrial vacancy at 2.2 per cent, or 1.6 per cent once sublease space is excluded, with the south sitting at 2.3 per cent. New warehouse supply for 2026 is tracking at around 95,000 sqm, the lowest level since 2018, as several projects slip into 2027.

Willer Property was founded in 2024 by Will Johns and has recently set up a Perth office in Subiaco. With this deal its assets under management approach $50 million. It describes itself as a boutique value-add and development investor.

The acquisition sits in a closed-ended wholesale vehicle, the Willer Brewer Industrial Trust, set up specifically to own and improve the asset. Reports say the trust attracted strong backing from high net worth and family office investors, with Willer's principals co-investing alongside them.

Johns has framed the price as reflecting underlying land value. He has also said the passing rent is well below market, which he sees as an opportunity rather than a problem. In other words, the buyer is not relying on today's income alone. The thesis rests on three things:

• Land value: a 2.17 hectare infill holding in a precinct where big sites barely trade
• Rent upside: income that can be lifted over time towards market levels
• Development upside: roughly 9,500 sqm of spare land outside the lease that, subject to approvals, could take a new facility of about 4,500 sqm plus substantial hardstand

Willer is already canvassing occupiers for that surplus land. A pre-committed tenant would turn idle dirt into a second income stream on the same title. Johns has called Perth the tightest industrial market in Australia and has flagged further industrial, industrial outdoor storage and sale-and-leaseback buys across WA, NSW, Queensland and Victoria.

The vendor has not been named in reports, so we will not speculate. What we can say is that the campaign was handled off-market by Knight Frank, which is common for assets of this size in Perth right now. With so little stock available, a well-targeted approach to a short list of qualified buyers can deliver a result without the cost and exposure of a public campaign.

For an owner, selling a property with a below-market lease and unused land is a trade-off. You hand the upside to the next owner, but you crystallise a price set largely by land value in a market where land is scarce. That is a sensible exit for many holders, particularly in a low-coverage asset where the value is in the ground.

The Canning Vale sale lands in a busy stretch for Perth industrial property:

• Woolworths distribution centre, Perth Airport: Hesperia's $267.7 million purchase from Growthpoint at a 5.63 per cent core market yield drove most of the roughly $400 million in third-quarter sales.
• Lester Group assets: Cosgrove Group bought two assets from Lester Group for a combined $58.2 million.
• 493-495 Abernethy Road, Kewdale: Symbion sold its WA distribution centre to Harmony Property Investments for $16.8 million on a sale-and-leaseback this month.
• 49 Coldwell Road, Kenwick: a 3.96 hectare family-held site in the Maddington-Kenwick Strategic Employment Area sold off-market for $11 million to local builders, also in the past week.

Cushman & Wakefield puts year-to-date Perth industrial transactions at $475.7 million, a total that could beat 2022's $523.9 million by year end. Prime core yields are generally sitting between 6.00 and 6.25 per cent.

The common thread across these deals is land. Whether it is a distribution centre at the airport, a sale-and-leaseback in Kewdale or a development site in Kenwick, buyers are paying for well-located industrial ground they cannot easily find elsewhere.

1 Brewer Road shows that the same logic now applies to smaller value-add plays. Low site cover used to be seen as inefficient. In a market with vacancy around 2 per cent and supply running years behind demand, it has become a feature. Spare land is optionality and buyers are willing to pay for it.

It also confirms the role of private capital in Perth. Boutique syndicators backed by family offices and high net worth investors are competing hard for assets in the $10 million to $30 million range, often off-market, while the large funds focus on bigger logistics assets.

• Know what your land is worth on its own. If the site has low coverage or surplus land, a buyer may value it on land rather than income. Make sure your pricing reflects that.
• Show the upside clearly. Spare land is only worth something if buyers can see it. Site plans, concept layouts and clear frontage and access details help a buyer picture a second building.
• Explain the lease honestly. A below-market rent is not a deal breaker if it is presented as reversion potential with supporting evidence.
• Tell the story of the location. Highway links, port and airport access and the strength of the tenant all matter. Good mapping and visuals do this faster than paragraphs of copy.
• Off-market still needs marketing. A short list of buyers still deserves a polished information pack. The quality of the material shapes the quality of the offers.

The next step is the surplus land. If Willer secures an occupier for a new facility of around 4,500 sqm on the spare 9,500 sqm, it will need planning approval and the site will effectively become two income streams on one holding. That would be a strong test of how much value can be unlocked from low-coverage industrial sites in Perth's south.

Also keep an eye on VEEM's footprint in Canning Vale and on rents in the precinct as the lease approaches review. More broadly, watch for whether the slipped 2027 supply arrives on time, whether prime rents keep growing at the roughly 4 per cent Cushman & Wakefield expects for 2026 and whether more family-owned sites in Kenwick, Maddington and Canning Vale find their way to market. For now, Perth industrial land remains one of the scarcest commodities in Australian commercial property.