Tasmania’s visitor economy is usually told through its landscapes, its galleries and its dining rooms. It is told less often from the place where the food begins its journey: a temperature-controlled warehouse, where chilled and frozen product waits for the morning’s deliveries. At Derwent Park, a short drive from the Hobart CBD, one such building is now being offered to investors, and it says a good deal about where Tasmania’s growth ends up.

Tourism Tasmania’s visitor survey for the year ending March 2026 recorded 1.404 million visitors, the highest figure ever measured, with spending of $3.791 billion, up 7.8 per cent on the previous year. Tourism Research Australia’s satellite accounts for 2023-24, published by Tourism Tasmania, put the sector’s contribution at $4.55 billion, or 10.8 per cent of gross state product, the highest direct and indirect share in the country. Each of those visitors eats, and every meal has a supply chain behind it.

For much of the hospitality trade, that chain runs through food service distributors such as PFD Foods. The business is leased to the property at 2-4 Bender Drive, where it operates from a 4,520sqm cold storage facility on a 13,850sqm landholding. PFD Foods is now part of Woolworths Group, which in August 2024 agreed to finalise the full ownership of the business. Today, PFD operates as one of Australia’s largest food service distributors, backed by the scale, infrastructure and financial strength of the Woolworths Group.

CBRE’s Yosh Mendis says the combination is difficult to find.

“Cold storage is one of the hardest property types to replicate given the high barriers to entry and respective construction costs to build such facilities, particularly in a market the size of Hobart. When a national food service distributor has invested in a facility like this and then funded an expansion, it tells you the building is performing exactly as the tenant needs it to.’

That tenant-funded expansion is among the asset’s most telling features. A tenant does not commit its own capital to a building it intends to leave, and the lease reflects the same long view: a 15-year net lease to 2036, with options extending to 2071. Rent increases by a fixed 2.8 per cent each year, with PFD Foods (Woolworths Group) paying rates, land tax, building insurance, public liability insurance and management fees as per the lease. The net income is $781,130 per annum plus GST.

“The lease structure is what many private investors look for. High specification facilities on significant landholdings. In case of PFD Foods (Woolworths Group) the site is positioned on an irreplaceable 1.4 hectare site. Underpinning this you have a tenant owned by one of Australia’s largest retailers, fixed annual increases of 2.8 per cent and the tenant covering the outgoings. It is a simple, strong land, building and income story. “

The location adds to the appeal. Derwent Park is an established industrial precinct with access to the Brooker Highway and the Hobart CBD within minutes, the sort of position that suits a distribution operation serving the greater Hobart market. Site coverage is a low 33 per cent, which leaves room for an owner to consider the longer term expansions to the site.

For investors, the property offers something that is hard to come by on any mainland capital city’s metropolitan industrial precinct, let alone in Tasmania: a purpose-built cold storage asset, leased to a food distributor backed by an ASX-listed retailer. PFD Foods (Woolworths), 2-4 Bender Drive, Derwent Park is being offered through CBRE’s Investment Portfolio Auction 188.

2-4 Bender Drive, Derwent Park TAS 7009