The company said the additional funding was an unsecured five-year loan from Nedbank Corporate Property Finance.

“We have this development pipeline to fund and we had existing unutilised facilities, but these were not sufficient to fund the full pipeline, so we have been looking to access additional debt facilities,” said CEO Norbert Sasse.

The facility would be drawn down as the developments reached completion, he said.

Sasse said the development and acquisition pipeline would be coming on stream in the next 18 months.

About R2bn would be spent by the end of June, a further R1bn would be spent from July to December, with the balance being spent next year.

Sasse said that if Growthpoint were to fund the entire development pipeline using debt, the company’s loan to value ratio would increase from 33% to about 42%.

Among the projects Growthpoint will be bringing on stream is the

The company said it would also be opening its new R500m Woodmead Retail Park this month.

Both properties are already fully let.

Growthpoint said it had managed to secure an additional facility at a time when global markets were battling after the subprime market fallout in the US.

The company said it had been fortunate to have raised R4,3bn of debt through its commercial mortgage backedsecuritisation programme between November 2005 and November 2006.