Sygnus RE sets summer 2027 delivery date for Lakes Pen industrial park
Published:Friday | December 12, 2025 | 12:07 AMNeville Graham - Business Reporter
Sygnus Real Estate Finance Limited has broken ground on the Lakes Pen Industrial Park project, a 55-acre logistics and industrial development in St Catherine, pledging to deliver serviced lots to buyers by summer 2027.
The publicly listed real estate financier said the project is designed to harden Jamaica’s supply-chain infrastructure to handle events such as Hurricane Melissa, while expanding capacity for warehousing and logistics that the market has been signalling for years.
Since its inception in 2019, Sygnus RE, a member of the Sygnus Capital group, has deployed over $18 billion of investments, with positive returns, while delivering projects such as the nine-storey One Belmont commercial tower in New Kingston and an industrial complex on Spanish Town Road in Kingston built for IMCA Jamaica, the Caterpillar distributor.
At last report, for year ending August 2025, the company delivered earnings of $787 million.
At Lakes Pen, Sygnus RE will carve 34 serviced lots from 46.4 saleable acres – net of roads and common infrastructure – with individual lot sizes ranging from one to three acres.
Sygnus Capital’s Vice-President and Head of Real Estate & Project Finance, David Cummings, said the subdivision follows a feasibility study that identified demand exceeding one million square feet of industrial warehousing in the local market — distinct from capacity expansions by large private operators — making a serviced-lot model a practical way to monetise land, catalyse third-party investment, and maintain continuous redeployment of capital, Cummings said at Tuesday’s ceremony.
The Lakes Pen development sits adjacent to Wisynco Group, a large beverage manufacturer and consumer goods distributor, and is being positioned as an anchor for logistics expansion on Spanish Town’s outskirts.
The total development cost is “in excess of US$20 million”, Cummings said.
China Harbour Engineering Company, CHEC, was engaged as contractor for the project under a design-build contract signed in December 2024. CHEC expects to employ around 100 persons during the construction.
Underground power distribution and resilience-oriented civil works are central to the park’s design — choices that Cummings noted were specified from the outset and “not merely a reaction” to Melissa.
Permits for the subdivision were approved by the National Environment & Planning Agency in November, and the contractor mobilised immediately.
The park will be enclosed by a 2.4-metre (8-foot) perimeter wall with anti-climb spikes, monitored by surveillance cameras across common areas and supported by a rapid-response armed security team housed on site. Entry gates are engineered to handle simultaneous 40-foot container movements.
Water reliability will be buttressed by a 70,000-gallon reserve tank, while storm water is managed via two retention ponds. Intentional landscaping — paved roads, sidewalks lined with poui and palm trees, and park benches — rounds out the amenities, Cummings said.
Speaking at the ceremony, Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness made note of the project’s underground utilities and security infrastructure, saying such features were emblematic of “resilience building” which must be part of the agenda now that Jamaica faces “greater intensity, frequency, and oftentimes overlapping” climate shocks.
Both businesses and the government have to “mainstream” and “systemise climate considerations” into economic decisions, he said.
Jamaica suffered its worst storm experience under Melissa, which left physical damage to private and public properties and infrastructure, preliminarily estimated at US$8.8 billion. International partners have since assembled up to US$6.7 billion in financing to be deployed over three years to support Jamaica’s recovery and reconstruction.