Athol Campbell, CE of Pangbourne, a 70% industrial property focused company, said a buoyant industrial property market in the first six months of the year also contributed to the improvement.

The industrial property market in general had been stagnant for the past three years.

Campbell said he remained "cautiously optimistic" about Pangbourne's future prospects though the result exceeded market expectation.

Pangbourne announced on Wednesday a final distribution of 48c for each combined unit for the six months to June 30 this year.

An interim distribution of 41c for each combined unit was declared on February 13 for the six months ended December 31 last year. The total distribution for the year ended June 30 this year was 89c for each combined unit, compared with 88c the previous year.

Executive director of asset management Gerard de Rauville also attributed positive distribution announcement to portfolio disposals totalling R269m over the past year.

Pangbourne announced yesterday that De Rauville and David Kennedy had been appointed as executive directors with immediate effect.

"The commercial and industrial property market is highly dependent on rental and letting income and our priority over the past year has been on streamlining and enhancing our portfolio," said De Rauville.

"We've aimed at selling off under-performing properties in low-rental areas and making targeted acquisitions and disposals that reflect our core focus on sought after commercial and industrial properties outside the central business districts. This strategy has borne fruit, we currently have a substantially increased occupancy rate of over 90%."

Campbell said letting in the Benrose industrial area east of the Johannesburg central business district, where the company owns 60 industrial properties, had improved dramatically.

"We have halved the vacancies there by improving security. We fenced off the whole area and put booms in and this has resulted in a significant drop in the crime rate," he said.

Campbell said Pangbourne had also redeveloped and let a previously vacant 14000m² property in Diesel Road, Isando near the Johannesburg International Airport. He said they had reduced vacancies from 38% to 10% at office block President Place in Rosebank and attributed this to better marketing on the part of the company.

This had gone against the office space trend in Rosebank, where there were a lot of vacancies. He said the President Place property had been brought into the portfolio with the acquisition of CBD Property Fund from the Sage Group in June past year. Pioneer Property was also acquired from Sage during that time.

One of Pangbourne's major portfolio re-alignments had been the acquisition of the Congella Federation portfolio, a R100m deal recently approved by the Competition Commission.