Talking Investment: ‘A strong first half for Derby’s industrial sector’

Derby’s industrial sector performed strongly in the first half of the year after a slow end to 2025, according to Nick Hosking, director of agency and development at Innes England. Here, in his own words, Nick explains why Derby is well placed to see this continue.

I think most of us will probably agree that the first half of the year has flown by.

It won’t be long before we’re all planning for 2027 and the second half of 2025 will seem a distant past.

For shed agents like me the second half of last year will take some getting over.

It was a real slog, deals proved really hard work to get over the line and understandably there was a reluctance from many occupiers to commit in the run up to November’s Budget, which just killed industrial take-up in the latter part of the year.

Against that backdrop we still saw a decent performance with Derby’s industrial take-up last year well above the 10-year average, albeit down on the bumper year of 2024 where the huge Greggs facility at SmartParc SEGRO had really skewed the figures.

Cue the first few months of 2026 and the impact of the war in the Middle East has created global economic uncertainty, despite which the UK logistics market has continued to show remarkable resilience.

Here in Derby, we’ve had a really strong 2026.

The year started with local supply levels dominated by two units, Oxenwood’s former Ted Baker unit at Derby Commercial Park in Raynesway and Derby 507 – Logicor’s huge spec shed at Infinity Park, which in the last couple of months has been let to Ceva – and at some 508,003 sq ft clearly will give a massive helping hand to Derby’s overall industrial take-up figures for the year.

This deal is huge for Derby – the city’s largest shed deal for a decade and a real testament to both a strong XL warehouse sector and the level of occupier demand for new large scale Grade A product within the local market.

Continued success too this year at the ever-popular Indurent Park Derby where Pureseoul – the country’s largest Korean skincare and cosmetics brand – has opened their national distribution hub joining an international roster of occupiers including Getinge, Rodd & Gunn, Sinoboon, Utopia, Kia and Derby’s own Rolls-Royce.

In terms of availability, Indurent has a couple of new Grade A units (43,000 sq ft and 82,000 sq ft) available immediately – but given strong take-up the supply of new space is pretty thin on the ground with only a handful of units available.

That shortfall, particularly in the small and mid-box market will, in part, be met by Hortons, which is rolling out a new build scheme at the well-established Sinfin Commercial Park, which is strategically located near to Rolls-Royce’s civil aerospace campus.

While nationally the flow of new stock has slowed sharply, Hortons’ huge investment into Derby will deliver 17 new grade A units from 5,000 to 70,000 sq ft to the local market .

In addition, Hortons has just completed the multi-million refurbishment of a 66,000 sq ft warehouse fronting Sinfin Lane, which has just been brought to the market and is already attracting strong interest.

Derby’s industrial sector has performed strongly in the first half of the year and with this new investment coming forward is well placed looking forward into the latter part of 2026 and beyond.