Ayala Land to develop Luzon industrial estates

Property giant Ayala Land Inc. is expanding its industrial estate portfolio by building new hubs north and south of Luzon to meet rising demand from multinational manufacturers seeking new havens given the rising costs in China.

Before the year ends, ALI is set to launch a new industrial estate initially offering 50 hectares as part of its mixed-use project Alviera in Porac, Pampanga, ALI senior vice president Art Corpuz said in an interview with the Inquirer.

By the first half of next year, Corpuz said ALI would also launch a new industrial estate in the Cavite-Laguna-Batangas-Rizal-Quezon (Calabarzon) area as its 450-hectare industrial estate Laguna Technopark, a partnership with Mitsubishi Corp., has already reached full capacity.

Corpuz said ALI was finalizing a deal to acquire at least 200 hectares of land to house the new industrial estate in the south.

“The demand is there especially from Japanese (locators),” Corpuz said, noting that Calabarzon had become a comfort zone for many of these locators. “A lot of them will be in automotive electronics technology.”

He said ALI would like to offer the new industrial estates soon to take advantage of that window of opportunity arising from the “China plus one” strategy of Japanese multinational manufacturers. This refers to the strategy of looking for other hubs outside of China to hedge against rising labor costs in China and diversify into new hubs such as Southeast Asia. “This is the right timing,” Corpuz said.

Corpuz said the preference among locators was still southern Luzon, particularly in Cavite and Laguna where there was already a critical mass of industrial estates.

A key dilemma among developers, however, is dwindling space availability especially in Cavite and Laguna, which are very close to Metro Manila, where the residential property market is booming. Many developers typically tend to prioritize residential projects where yields are better compared to industrial estate development.

In the case of ALI, Corpuz said industrial estate development was never a big part of its portfolio but noted that this was something worthwhile to pursue given its impact on national development. Laguna Technopark, he noted, was the biggest technopark in the country in terms of revenues and value contribution, at one point accounting for 20 percent of the country’s total export revenues.

Laguna Technopark, one of the first privately owned industrial estates in the country, was formed in 1989 in response to the government’s call for private sector participation in countryside development. Straddling the towns of Sta. Rosa and Biñan, the estate has grown from 224 hectares to 450 hectares.

A usual critique on the Philippine growth model is its jump from agrarian to services-oriented economy while skipping the industrial phase, which is critical in creating more jobs especially for low- and semi-skilled workers.