HP Inc hoping for more than €50m from sale of Leixlip site

11 Jul 2017

HP printer. Image: Cineberg/Shutterstock

Following the decision to close its Leixlip plant with the loss of 500 jobs, HP Inc has put the facility up for sale.

HP Inc – not to be associated with spin-out business HP Enterprise – is hoping to get more than €50m for the site it has had for more than 20 years.

According to The Irish Times, the Liffey Park Technology Campus will be one of Ireland’s largest ever industrial real-estate trades, at 195 acres in size.

For the prospective buyer, HP’s previous campus is spread across nine buildings and includes a clean room, warehouse and manufacturing facilities, along with other services to support hundreds of jobs.

With a total floor space of 1.46m sq ft, the site is expected to be sweetened with 70 acres of undeveloped land for whoever might want to expand the campus.

Led by estate agents CBRE, the new owners should be aware that the site’s zoning permissions are expected to remain in situ until 2023.

CBRE’s executive director, Willie Norse, said: “It will represent one of the largest industrial and indeed overall property disposals in Ireland in recent years.

“This high-tech manufacturing complex represents an economic opportunity for large-scale end users to secure a commercial industrial/manufacturing facility at a fraction of reinstatement value, or alternatively for investors who would seek to lease out the entire campus, thereby generating a significant rent roll.”

Last February, HP announced that it was to cut 500 jobs at the Leixlip plant as part of a major restructuring effort, with the inkjet cartridge manufacturing site deemed too costly to run in the years to come. 

In October last year, HP admitted that it was under serious financial pressure, with the expectation that it would need to cut up to 4,000 jobs globally between 2017 and 2019 as part of a $500m restructuring drive.

HP printer. Image: Cineberg/Shutterstock

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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