The founders of US logistics company KTR Capital Partners have joined forces with Christian Jamison, the former chief executive of Delin Capital Asset Management, to launch a major new venture focused on the European industrial market.

Jeffrey Kelter and Robert Savage are backing Valor Real Estate Partners, having sold KTR and its 70m sq ft portfolio to Prologis last year for $5.9bn (£4.5bn).

The duo are partners and substantial investors in Valor, and will help give the firm initial firepower running into hundreds of millions of pounds.

They will sit on the company’s investment committee alongside Jamison, who is also a minority investor and the managing partner. Jamison, who established Delin in 2012 and built a €500m (£420m) portfolio before leaving the business earlier this year, is currently recruiting a team, focusing first on bringing in investment professionals with expertise in different European markets.

Valor will target the UK and western Europe and has a broad remit to invest in a variety of industrial properties as well as pursue development. It will have a value-add investment style looking for total returns in the mid-teens and above.

In the wake of the EU referendum result, Jamison said the new firm would proceed cautiously, particularly when it comes to taking on development risk in the UK.

However, he said the company was on the lookout for opportunities, and would look to take advantage of the ongoing growth of ecommerce and economies of scale in the industrial sector in order to build a large portfolio.

“We have big ambitions to build a substantial business,” he said. “A very disciplined investment strategy will enable us to find opportunities through the cycle.

“We have the flexibility to do anything within the industrial sector depending on market conditions.”

As the business grows, Kelter and Savage would help unlock funding from US institutional investors.

Kelter said he saw opportunities to apply lessons learned in the US, which he said was ahead of Europe in its evolution.

“We see many of the same characteristics across the European industrial real estate landscape that we saw in the US when we established KTR [in 2004],” he said.