First Holdings expands industrial estate footprint

First Philippine Holdings Corp. (FPHC) of the Lopez family is looking to raise the bar for economic zones in the country with plans of expanding its industrial estate footprint to a level seen at par with other Asian countries.

In an interview on the sidelines of the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting yesterday, FPHC president and chief operating officer Elpidio L. Ibañez said the company is targeting to expand its industrial park in Batangas to 2,000 hectares from its present size of 450 hectares.

“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,” Ibañez said.

FPHC currently operates an industrial park in Santo Tomas, Batangas through First Philippine Industrial Park Inc. (FPIP) – a joint venture with Sumitomo Corp. of Japan.

Ibañez said FPHC is earmarking P1.4 billion this year alone for land banking for the group’s industrial park.

“We’re spending on incremental land banking. The industrial park we’re expanding that. We’re buying land adjacent to that to expand because of the influx of new investments from potential locators,” he said.

FPHC in January this year had already acquired through an auction a 46-hectare property located at the Philtown Industrial Park in Tanauan, Batangas.

The property, which was previously owned by

Brilliante Realty Corp. and Mitsubishi Motors Philippines Corp., is adjacent to the company’s existing industrial park.

“FPIP did well in 2014 raising its net income by 14 percent year-on-year while continuing to land bank at around 50 hectares annually. FPIP presently has 450 hectares of saleable land and is the largest contiguous industrial park in the Philippines today,” FPHC chief finance officer Francis Giles Puno said.

“I can see FPIP building up alternative revenue bases as it tests new ground with more ready-built factories, land leases, on-site strip malls, BPO companies, warehouses, water utilities, and even alternative industrial sites catering to other industrial market segments,” added FPHC chairman and chief executive officer Federico Lopez.

The Lopez-led firm said its planned initial expansion within the next four years would provide an additional 20,000 jobs to the 40,000 already generated by the ecozone.

As a premier industrial park in the country, the 450-hectare FPIP houses multinationals in electronic and semiconductors manufacturing, solar cells and aircraft components manufacturing, plastic and metal engineering, consumer goods manufacturing, as well as other technology-based sectors.