Company founder and CEO Tan Passakornatee is handling the investment.

A subsidiary named Kluay Kluay will soon be established to manage the five-storey Monkey Lotus shopping mall, located in Lop Buri town and featuring 40,000 square metres of commercial floor space and a 4.8-hectare Banana Square weekend market alongside the complex.

Tan said the Oishi Group's board approved expenditure of Bt300 million to buy an 8-hectare plot of land that was formerly a non-performing asset from Thai Asset Management. It also agreed to spend an additional Bt300 million to construct the shopping mall and market. The mall houses a Tesco Lotus on its first three floors and an IT City, four cinemas and a 12-lane bowling alley on the top two floors.

Banana Square and the first three floors of Monkey Lotus, occupied by Tesco Lotus, opened last December. The remaining two floors, for IT City, the cinemas and the bowling alley, will open in June.

Tan said he was negotiating with two cinema operators.

The new company, Kluay Kluay, which will operate the mall and the market, will be formed by June, with registered capital of Bt600 million. Oishi will hold an 81-per-cent stake local investors in Lop Buri the rest.

While Tesco Lotus, IT City, the cinemas and the bowling alley will attract visitors to the shopping mall, a promotion offering low rental fees is already making the weekend market popular. Merchants are offered a rental rate of Bt50 a day for a 3-x-2-metre spot in the market for the first month of the market's operation. That will later increase to Bt100 a day.

Tan said the strategy had attracted thousands of merchants to the market. Spending rates are also satisfactory, with some merchants taking in as much as Bt10,000 a day.

He declined to reveal expected revenue figures from the venture but said it would take several years to reach the break-even point. 

Nitida Asawanipont

The Nation