A London-based property company, founded in 1920 as the Slough Trading Company, that owns and builds warehouses and industrial space near UK cities and transport hubs.
SEGRO builds and looks after the warehouses and industrial buildings that sit behind modern life: the places where goods are stored, sorted and sent on, plus space for light industry and data. Wikipedia describes it as a British property investment and development company that focuses on commercial and industrial property around big cities and key transport hubs in the UK and continental Europe. A Property Week profile describes its business as urban warehousing, big box distribution sites, data centres, multi-storey buildings and mixed schemes of homes and warehouses, plus a flexible space brand called FLEXI.
SEGRO's story starts in 1920, when Sir Percival Perry and Sir Noel Mobbs founded the Slough Trading Company to develop the site of the Slough Trading Estate in Berkshire. It was renamed Slough Estates in 1926, spread to Birmingham in 1931, grew through acquisitions in the 1980s, and in 2007 became a real estate investment trust (REIT) and took the name SEGRO. A REIT is a listed property company that passes most of its rental income to shareholders. The Property Week profile says the company is proud of its community roots, including a free healthcare service for estate workers that began before the NHS, and quotes its chief executive saying SEGRO wants to do the right thing for partners, staff and the community.
The Slough Trading Estate is still its anchor. Wikipedia also names SEGRO Park Dagenham, Perivale and Rainham in outer London and East Midlands Gateway, while Property Week mentions Park Hayes in Coventry, a 50% stake in a partnership with Heathrow Airport and Brixton, a company it bought in 2009. It has offices in a dozen or so European locations; Property Week put its team at about 350 people at the time of writing, which is an older figure. Because most of its sites are on the edges of cities and next to motorways, airports and ports, its jobs are spread across the UK and are not all in the centre of London.
On culture, the profile describes a company that avoided furloughing staff during the pandemic and where the board gave up part of its pay for a fund marking the company's hundredth year. That article is several years old and is a magazine's account, not SEGRO's own words. It also says SEGRO takes a pragmatic approach when customers have cash-flow trouble and puts practical measures such as solar panels, biodiversity, energy efficiency and water recycling first.
The businesses that rent SEGRO's buildings include online retailers, logistics firms, food and drink producers, entertainment and aviation firms, so the people in the company work with a wide mix of customers. Typical roles are property and asset managers, development and planning managers, leasing teams, project and construction managers, finance and legal staff, and sustainability specialists. Geography, maths, business and design and technology are all useful starting points. Check the company's website for current vacancies.
Website: www.segro.com
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