A WEEK after its groundbreaking, the Cebu-Cordova Link Expressway (CCLEx) has started attracting investors in Cordova town, after a leading logistics company is set to put up its P250-million distribution facility.
Royal Cargo Inc. Group CEO Michael Kurt Raeuber said the company bought 3.5 hectares of property, at P5,000 per square meter, in Pilipog, Cordova town, just a few meters from the planned approach of the viaduct.
Raeuber made the announcement to the media last Thursday, during the opening of the three-day 17th Annual Worldwide Project Consortium (WWPC) Member Conference in Shangri-La’s Mactan Cebu Resort in Lapu-Lapu City.
“We are probably the first investor making use of this opportunity acquiring land for the setup of a distribution center in Mactan,” Raeuber said.
The company intends to construct a dry-goods distribution facility and, later on, a cold-storage plant, he said. “But we are also waiting for the completion of the viaduct and the bridge.”
Upon completion of the project, Raeuber said it will cost them around P500 million.
He also said the new bridge would further develop Mactan Island, which includes Cordova, and will open the area to more investment.
Raeuber was the former president of the European Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
In his welcome speech, Raeuber briefed the around 100 delegates coming from more than 70 countries the business situation in the Philippines.
“With a relatively small, but growing export base of mainly electronics and agricultural products and its minerals untapped for largely political reasons, the growing wealth of the nation is based on its biggest asset, its young and productive industrious population at home and abroad,” Raeuber said.
He said the country has a strategic position as a gateway between Asia and the Pacific in close proximity to the largest economic powers in the region, China and Japan, and supposedly control several sea routes for trade and commerce.
Raeuber also mentioned the involvement of Royal Cargo’s project and heavy-lift department on the 130-megawatt, solar-power facility in Cadiz, said to be the among the biggest in Asia.
He said the Philippine government has pledged to open up the economy to more foreign investments by allowing foreign construction contractors to bid for government projects, including private-public partnership (PPP) projects.
“There are interesting projects improving the countries road, rail and sea links, development of which fell behind our regional competitors,” Raeuber said.
The projects he was referring to are the integrated transport terminals, seaports, ferry terminals, airports and mass-transit railway lines and new expressway projects.
“All in all, the Philippines’s long-neglected transportation system is in the midst of a major overhaul across all segments, which should result in dramatically enhanced capacity and efficiency across the board,” he said.
In an informal news conference, Raeuber, together with WWPC Head Office Director Wolfgang Karau, Hong Kong Regional Office Director Stuart Murdoch and Elmer Sarmiento of Royal Cargo, lauded the government for putting up the CCLEx.
The WWPC is supported each year by shipping companies and airlines, active within the heavy and outsized cargo business, including Volga-Dnepr Group, Rickmers-Linie, Combi Lift and Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics.
As with previous WWPC conferences, a local charity, Albert Schweitzer Familienwerk Foundation Philippines, to support children in need is the beneficiary of a charity auction, hosted by the WWPC Group.
WWPC was founded in 1998, with the aim to connect independent project cargo-forwarding companies under one umbrella. Today the Worldwide Project Consortium represents a top brand easily recognized within the project cargo industry. Through the WWPC shippers, carriers and forwarding partners have a first-class reference source to locate the most professional project cargo specialists in the represented countries.
Royal Cargo Inc. has 36 years of experience in cargo transportation and handling, with its own global network of and trusted agents. It provides high-quality and cost-efficient specialized logistics in domestic and international freight forwarding, warehousing and distribution, projects and heavylift, business-process outsourcing, customs brokerage, liquid transportation, shipping agencies and trucking services, and logistic solutions for clinical research and development—all with owned equipment and facilities.
Royal Cargo Inc., the only member of WWPC in the Philippines, hosted this year’s conference as decided by all members in last year’s conference in Panama.
“I was able to convince our members to vote for Cebu, because I took pride in mentioning Cebu, its beautiful people, the island and a great place like what we have right now in Cebu,” Raeuber said.
It was also the first time the Philippines hosted the event.