Business Day Reporter

The new R10bn head office, manufacturing and distribution facility was recently completed for Pyrotec at Capricorn Park in Muizenberg.

CAPRICORN Park, a 68ha business and technology campus near Muizenberg, is benefiting from a strengthening office and industrial property market.

Wendy Hartshorne, executive manager of Capricorn Park, says that 30 sites have been sold for development in the past six months. This is almost double the number sold in the entire previous four years.

Investment in Capricorn Park’s first four years, including infrastructure of R97m, totalled about R182m. This figure is expected to double when the newly sold sites are developed during the year.

Capricorn Park is expecting to see an additional 41000m² of buildings being constructed this year. About 550 jobs are expected to be created.

Launched in 2000, Capricorn Park was initially conceived as a science and technology park, but got off to a slow start, partly as a result of a worldwide downturn in the information and technology industry.

However, it was recently placed under the new management of the Rabie Group and repositioned to broaden its scope and appeal as a commercial and clean-industry park.

Apart from the 30 sales, a further seven sites are under negotiation at the moment.

Hartshorne says that the shifting sentiments towards Capricorn Park were due not only to the upturn in the commercial and industrial property market generally, but also due to the improved outlook for the southern and southeastern regions of the Cape peninsula.