Canadian Company Plans $100M Phoenix Facility

Future APEL Extrusions facility. Image courtesy of Colliers

Canadian firm APEL Extrusions has acquired a 22.6-acre parcel in Phoenix, planning an on-site 323,782-square-foot headquarters and manufacturing facility. Becknell Industrial sold the property and will also develop the new facility for the Calgary-based aluminum extrusion company. Construction is set to begin this spring, with completion slated for 2022.

APEL will initially make use of the facility’s manufacturing component starting with 2022, as the firm plans to hire roughly 200 employees at the site. APEL’s headquarters will be relocated to Phoenix at a later time. This will be the company’s second location both outside of Canada and in the Western U.S., where it first started operating in 2014 in a 135,000-square-foot facility in Coburg, Ore.

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Conceived to be the most modern extrusion-finishing factory in North America, the $100 million facility will take shape at the southeast corner of the new Loop 202 Freeway and Lower Buckeye Road. Upon completion, the building will feature 12 drive-in doors, three dock doors, 30-foot clear height and two crane bays.

The site is some 8 miles west of downtown Phoenix, in a dense area of logistics and manufacturing facilities operated by Amazon, FedEx and Marshalls, among others. Interstate 10 is roughly 4 miles north.

Colliers Executive Vice President Rob Martensen arranged the transaction, together with Senior Vice President John Krueger, who served as site consultant and liaison between APEL and various local authorities.

Industrial developments—full steam ahead

The Phoenix market continues to have one of the strongest industrial pipelines in the U.S., ranking third after Dallas-Fort Worth and Chicago, according to a recent CommercialEdge report. More than 15 million square feet of space were underway as of February, accounting for 5.9 percent of the total stock.

Planned developments accounted for another 7.7 percent of stock, nearly three times above the national average of 2.9 percent, the report shows.

The Phoenix West submarket has seen significant development activity during the first quarter of 2021, with more activity projected to take place in the coming quarters. According to CommercialEdge information, some 10.3 million square feet of industrial space was underway as of April, the largest project being a 2.3 million-square-foot Amazon facility in Goodyear, Ariz.

This month, LPC Desert West will break ground on a 321,873-square-foot project in Phoenix, at the southwest corner of 103rd Avenue and Buckeye Road. The company acquired the 20-acre development site in January.

Elsewhere in Phoenix, Akimel Gateway, a five-building, 519,000-square-foot development of Trammell Crow Co., kicked off construction in February. The 59-acre site is at the southwest corner of the Loop 202 extension and 40th Street on the Gila River Indian Community.