Posted on September 15, 2013 10:12:40
PM [ BusinessWorld Online ]
PROPERTY DEVELOPER Aboitiz Land, Inc.
(AboitizLand) is eyeing more opportunities in industrial estates as it
finalizes this month the acquisition of a property in Batangas, a top official
of the parent conglomerate said late Thursday.
“We are finalizing the purchase of Lima Land of the Alcantara Group,”
Erramon I. Aboitiz, president and chief executive officer of Aboitiz Equity
Ventures, told reporters on the sidelines of a media party organized by the
Aboitiz Group in Taguig City.
“By the end of this month, we would
have finalized and disclosed how much is the final price,” he added.
Mr. Aboitiz said utilization rate at
Lima Land is already “quite high.”
“That is why we are looking at other
properties,” he said.
AboitizLand in June said it offered to
purchase 60% of Lima Land, Inc., a subsidiary of Alsons Land Corp., which owns
the Lima Technology Center in Batangas.
Once finalized, Lima Technology Center
will add to AboitizLand’s two existing industrial estates in Mactan and
Balamban, which are both located in the province of Cebu, where the Aboitiz
Group was based before moving to its corporate headquarters in Taguig City
early this year.
“We think that there is an opportunity
for industrial estates, in a sense that there are many foreign investors that
are looking at the Philippines,” he explained.
“Many of them want to be in secure and
prepared industrial estates with proper infrastructure; so we are saying that
it’s gonna be a good business, we would like to see if we can build that
business,” he added.
“Our thinking was it would be best if
we gonna get an existing one, expand it,” he said of Lima Land.
Expansion of Lima will start next
year, Mr. Aboitiz said, but would not give details.
Aside from industrial estates,
AboitizLand is also the Aboitiz Group’s corporate vehicle for infrastructure
projects offered by the government under the public-private partnership (PPP)
program.
The company, in partnership with Ayala
Corp., was prequalified to bid for a P17.5-billion PPP project to expand and
operate Mactan Cebu International Airport.
It is also one of the groups
interested in a P35-billion project to build Cavite-Laguna Expressway. On
Thursday, Mr. Aboitiz the company was in talks with various potential partners
for the project.
Aboitiz Equity Ventures, Inc., the
parent of AboitizLand, saw its profit fall by 3.62% to P14.37 billion in the
first semester from P14.91 billion in the same six months last year.
Its shares gained 30 centavos or 0.62%
to close P48.50 apiece on Friday last week from P48.20 each on Thursday. --
Cliff Harvey C. Venzon
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