Aberdeen-based property development and investment company West Coast Estates has secured funding from OakNorth to support the acquisition of commercial assets in Aberdeen and St Andrews.
The finance will underpin plans for a major mixed-use development opportunity in St Andrews and what is set to become the UK’s first indoor drive-thru ultra-rapid electric vehicle charging hub in Aberdeen.
St Andrews scheme
West Coast Estates has acquired a seven-acre site on Craigtoun Road in St Andrews, with planning permission already in place for more than 60,000 sq ft of retail, office and employment space.
The development is expected to create more than 170 permanent jobs, alongside around 100 construction roles. Home Bargains has been secured as the anchor retailer, with the project also attracting further interest from prospective occupiers.
Aberdeen EV plans
In Aberdeen, the company has acquired Grampian House on Virginia Street, a former warehouse which has planning consent to be converted into an indoor drive-thru ultra-rapid EV charging hub.
The facility has been pre-let to charging operator Fastned on a 35-year lease and is expected to feature 12 ultra-rapid charging bays. The chargers will be capable of supplying up to 400kW, offering drivers as much as 100 miles of range in around five minutes.
Plans also include a café, shop and waiting area within the existing warehouse, with the hub targeting a winter 2026 opening.
‘Years of work’
West Coast Estates was founded 35 years ago and is led by Sarfraz Ali and Iftikar Mian. The business has developed a portfolio spanning retail, industrial and roadside commercial projects across Scotland, with a focus on EV charging, neighbourhood and roadside assets.
Iftikar Mian, director of West Coast Estates, said: “These two acquisitions represent years of work – identifying the sites, building the relationships, progressing the planning, and agreeing pre-lets and pre-sales to de-risk the projects.
“That’s how we operate, and it requires a lender who understands the strategy.
“OakNorth took the time to genuinely understand what we were trying to achieve and why, and structured a facility that reflected that understanding. They were direct, they moved at pace, and they backed us without requiring us to justify the model from scratch – which, after 30 years of doing this, makes a real difference.”
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Fraser McPhail, debt finance director at OakNorth, said the lender was pleased to support the company’s expansion.
He added: “The Aberdeen EV hub is a particularly compelling asset: a Fastned tenancy, a 35-year lease, and a genuinely pioneering format that reflects both the strength of the operator and the quality of the site West Coast Estates identified and secured.”
McPhail also described the St Andrews project as a scheme of “genuine scale and ambition”, supported by a pre-sale to Home Bargains in what he said was one of Scotland’s most commercially constrained planning environments.
