After acquiring a plot of land in Shanghai for RMB702 million (US$111 million), Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC Private and homebuilder China Vanke plan to jointly develop a high-end shopping centre.

GIC subsidiary Reco Guangfulin Private and Vanke unit SZITIC Commercial Property Group (SCPG) acquired the commercial lot in suburban Songjiang via public tender (the partnership was the sole contender). Their partnership follows Vanke buying a score of shopping centres in China from Singapore’s CapitaLand.

At an intersection in the Guangfulin area, the 46,800sqm site has a buildable gross floor area of 70,200sqm, representing a price of RMB10,000 a square metre for the bidders. Under the tender requirements, the new owners must develop the site and run the property themselves after completion. There is a building height limit of 24m.

Expected to be completed by 2022, the shopping centre will go head to head with Shanghai Songjiang Wanda Plaza, 2km away. The project is likely be branded InCity, the flagship shopping centre product of SCPG, which has eight shopping malls under the brand in second-tier cities Changshu, Foshan, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Suzhou, Tianji and Xi’an.

Vanke joined with unidentified partners to acquire SCPG from Blackstone in September 2016. The US private equity firm had taken a 40 per cent stake in SCPG in 2013.

Together with Vanke, SCPG entered a deal to buy 20 mainland shopping centres from CapitaLand for RMB8.37 billion last month.