CITY OF INDUSTRY, CA-SH Trading Inc., the US subidiary of South Korea's Shinhan Diamond Corp., has acquired two buildings here totaling 85,053 square feet to establish a new manufacturing plant after looking at sites in three counties. Voit Real Estate Services, which negotiated the $5.7 million acquisition of SH Trading, reports that engineering the deal involved working with multiple planning, zoning and fire department officials in various counties to find the ideal location for the SH Trading manufacturing facility.

The property includes an 82,053-square-foot building and a 3,000 square-foot building situated on 4.66 acres at 900 Ajax Ave. in the City of Industry's manufacturing and distribution sector. Voit VP Mike Boomer, a member of the team that represented SH Trading, points out that sealing the deal required providing the client with strategic guidance and expertise in working with the planning, zoning and fire department officials in North Orange County, Riverside County and Eastern Los Angeles County to find the ideal location.

Besides Boomer, members of the Voit team representing SH Trading included Joe Miller and Stan Kwak of the company's Anaheim Metro office. The seller, 900 Ajax Properties LLC, was represented by Anthony Brent of Lee and Associates.

SH Trading Inc., specialists in manufacturing diamond-based cutting tools, had previously distributed products manufactured in Asia, Boomer explained. In this new facility, the firm will manufacture its products locally and expand its distribution.

He points out that Voit negotiated the lowest sale price based on price per square-foot in the market in the last two years, beating the most recent sales comparable by $16 per square-foot.

In another industrial deal that closed recently in the Los Angeles area, Newport Beach-based Hager Pacific Properties reports that Fairfield, CA-based MV Transportation Inc., the largest privately owned transportation contracting firm in the US, signed a 10-year, $5.5 million lease for a 5.5-acre property at 21222 S. Wilmington Ave. in Carson that Hager Pacific owns in partnership with SoCal Industrial Partners LLC. MV Transportation will use the property, which includes a 22,000-square-foot maintenance and office building and a five-acre secured, lit and paved yard, to service the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority contract for the South Los Angeles region beginning on Oct. 31.

Rob Neal, a managing partner with Hager Pacific Properties, comments that the South Bay submarket in which Carson is located "continues to be resilient in a challenging economic environment.” The property that MV Transportation is leasing "generated a significant amount of interest from users and tenants," Neal noted.

Hager Pacific and SoCal Industrial Partners have acquired five properties in the Los Angeles basin together in the last nine months. The total value of these transactions is more than $25 million, placing the firms among the most active industrial real estate investors in the region.

Frank Hillebrand and John Lassiter of Lee and Associates represented Hager Pacific in the MV Transportation lease. Jeff Smart, Kyle Degener and the Reitz-Biondi-Kim team with Grubb & Ellis represented MV Transportation.