Philippines property developer SM Prime Holdings is looking to acquire shopping malls in China as well as buying more land for expansion.

But it is interested only in the Fujian province, says SM Prime executive committee head Hans Sy.
“We are still continuing to really look,” he says.

With “phenomenal development” in the past 10 years, the value of land has risen in China, and Sy says the group is assessing different areas that could offer value for money.

While there are malls up for sale, SM Prime is being careful about possible acquisitions. “I’m being choosy,” says Sy. “I only want within Fujian province.”

Fujian is the home province of his father, Henry Sy, the richest man in the Philippines, who built his retail empire from a small shoe store in Manila.

“We have the advantage right now [in Fujian] because of our success,” Sy says.

SM’s malls in China include Chengdu (166,665 sqm), Chongqing (149,429 sqm), Jinjiang (167,830 sqm), Suzhou (72,552 sqm), Xiamen (238,125 sqm) and Zibo (150,600 sqm) for a total gross floor area of 945,200 sqm. The company’s mall in Tianjin, which partially opened this year, has a gross floor area of 540,000 sqm.

In all, SM is targeting to further expand its mall network in the Philippines and China to 10.6 million square meters of gross floor area by 2018, according to documents presented in a briefing by SM Investments. This would be an extra 28 per cent from the 8.3 million gross floor area the company hit last year.

Of the target, 85 per cent would be accounted for by malls in the Philippines while 15 per cent would be in China.