Fairway advised Novaxia on the acquisition of the Biocitech site in partnership with Oxford Properties. This life sciences site, previously owned by Fiminco and Banque des Territoires, a subsidiary of Caisse des Dépôts, is located in Romainville (Seine-Saint-Denis) and includes 21,000 sqm of business space dedicated to Life Sciences, as well as a 3.5-hectare land reserve, and is currently home to 27 companies.
The campus is alreadỳ leased to 17 tenants of different sizes, including Galapagos , Mutabilis and Nexdot. It hosts a scientific communitý around biotechnology, biopharmaceutical, bioinformatics, scientific and technological services, and medical devices and equipment activities.
“The first challenge was to capitalize on the history of the Biocitech business park, the last legacy of the Roussel-Uclaf site, a major French group in the pharmaceutical industry,” adds Joachim Azan, Novaxia’s founding president. In addition, this site, which is very well served and located near metro line 5, has immense development potential on a 3.5 hectare land reserve, with the possibility of extending it in the medium term to include a service activity in the ZAC de l’Horloge.
This first acquisition by Oxford Properties and Novaxia on the Biocitech site in Romainville is part of their strategic partnership (of €1 billion in France by 2024) last May in Life Sciences real estate assets to accelerate the growth of the sector in France. “Following on from Romainville, we are also targeting major urban areas such as Lyon, for example,” say Joachim Azan and Pierre Leocadio.