KUALA LUMPUR: Central i-City mall, located in i-City in Shah Alam, Selangor is targeting revenue of more than RM40 million in its first year of operation.
CPN Ventures Sdn Bhd chief operating officer Anthony Dylan said it targeted to register RM60 million in the second year of operation and double-digit growth year-on-year.
“We think it is achievable, given the current footfall of about 800,000 a month and our tenant mix. We are targeting one million visitors a month, so we will get healthy numbers from the third year,” he told the New Straits Times in an interview.
Central i-City, the largest shopping mall in Shah Alam, was developed at a cost of RM850 million. The 926,000-sq-ft six-storey mall with more than 350 retails stores already officially opened on June 15.
The mall is a joint-venture project between Thailand’s largest retail property developer Central Pattana PCL (CPN), with a 60 per cent stake, and I-City Properties Sdn Bhd (ICP), an affiliate of I-Berhad that holds 40 per cent.
CPN Ventures is a wholly-owned subsidiary of CPN while I-Berhad is the master developer of the RM10 billion i-City development.
Central i-City is CPN’s flagship project in Malaysia and its first internationally, signifying the group’s advancement into the Asean shopping centre landscape.
Selangor Menteri Besar Amirudin Shari had identified i-City as part of the state’s golden triangle and expected the location would be a catalyst to speed up the development of the state.
I-Berhad was invited recently to showcase i-City at the launch of the World Town Planning Day by Federal Territories Minister Khalid Abdul Samad.
Meanwhile, anchor tenants in Central i-City are Sogo Department Store (200,000 sq ft), TGV Cinemas (40,000 sq ft) and Village Grocer (40,000 sq ft).
Dylan said retailers like Padini Concept Store and Brands Outlet had over achieved their sales target.
“Retailers are performing well because we cluster them. There are eight clusters for shoppers to visit such as fashion and accessories, food and beverages (F&B), telecommunication and information technology, and services like banks. There is one cluster for the anchor tenants. This creates shopping convenience.
“It is also easy for shoppers to get from one place to another as we have 84 sets of escalators and more than 20 elevators in the mall,” said Dylan.
Besides collecting monthly rental income from the retailers, where the lease is at an average RM8 per sq ft, the mall is churning revenue from recycling food waste from their F&B tenants.
CPN Ventures is collecting food waste from the mall’s F&B tenants and sending them to a farm that breeds black soldier flies in Bestari Jaya, Kuala Selangor, with a RM41 million facility, to be recycled into animal feed and plant fertiliser.
The company’s general manager, Carrie Kon, said many malls faced problems with dirty and smelly loading bays.
“The stench of rotting food is a common issue in most loading bays. We are doing refuse management as a solution to smelly waste.”
Kon said each F&B outlet was given a white bucket to help with the separation process and trolleys would come by twice daily at 10am and 6pm to do collection.
“We collect 1.2 million tonnes of food waste a day on weekdays and up to 1.9 million tonnes on weekends, and send them to the farm,” she said.
The mall’s top three food waste contributors are the food court, a chicken rice shop and a Chinese restaurant.
The food court alone can generate more than 130kg of wet waste a day.