THE industrial park unit of Lopez-owned First Philippine Holdings Corp. (FPHC) said it will spend some P1.4 billion in capital expenditures for the year to further expand its landbank to accept more foreign locators.
Elpidio Ibanez, the company president, said the focus for the First Philippine Industrial Park Inc. (FPIP) is to expand its facilities in Santo Tomas, Batangas, by buying land in nearby areas.
“We’re buying land adjacent to that to expand because of the influx of new investments from potential locators. We bought the former Philtown property, that’s about 50 hectares, near our industrial park also. So that’s the general area of our expansion,” Ibanez said at the sidelines of the company’s stockholders’ meeting on Monday.
Ibanez is referring to its acquisition of the industrial estate of Phitown Properties Inc. and Philtown Utilities Corp. called Philtown Technology Park in Tanauan City in Batangas.
Also last year, the company said it bought the 46- hectare property of Mitsubishi Philippines Corp. inside Philtown’s park.
It then created a new firm called First Industrial Township Inc. to operate the said technology park, the second firm of industrial estate under the First Holdings group.
First Holdings, a company whose assets are mostly in power generation, wants to grow its other businesses such as property development that include industrial park, officials said.
So far, it has expanded about 100 hectares of its industrial park to about 450 hectares, already one of the country’s biggest but the size is still smaller compared with other Southeast Asian neighbors whose economy is bigger than the Philippines.
“You know in Thailand industrial parks are 2,000 hectares we pale by comparison so we have to do it gradually and try to get up to that level. But it all depends on how investors view it,” Ibanez said, adding that most of its locators are Japanese firms.
“I can see FPIP building up alternative revenue bases as it tests new ground with more ready-built factories, on-site strip malls, business-process outsourcing companies, warehouses, water utilities and even alter industrial sites catering to other industrial market segments,” said Federico Lopez, First Holdings chairman and CEO.