SINGAPORE - The development arm of CapitaLand Group has entered into a 50:50 joint venture with Japanese real estate group Mitsubishi Estate to invest 1.5 billion yuan (S$318 million) to develop a business park in China's Suzhou New District.
Construction will begin next year and the business park is expected to be completed in 2024.
Suzhou New District is the city's second-largest national development zone after the Suzhou Industrial Park. It occupies only 2.5 per cent of Suzhou's land area but accounts for about 10 per cent of the city's gross domestic product.
CapitaLand Development (CLD) will helm the master planning and development of the business park, while operations will be managed by real estate investment manager CapitaLand Investment.
The business park will sit on a 5ha plot of land within the central business district of Suzhou New District, and have a total construction area of over 220,000 sq m.
It will feature multi-tenanted buildings with provisions for research and development activities, as well as community and lifestyle amenities, said CapitaLand and Mitsubishi Estate on Thursday (Dec 30).
The park will also cater to tenants in high-tech new economy sectors such as information and communication technologies, smart manufacturing, artificial intelligence and biomedical sciences.
They added that the project will promote collaboration among companies, research institutions, government agencies and talent amid a green and sustainable environment.
"The business park will incorporate green technologies such as photovoltaic solar panels, ecological drainage systems, rainwater harvesting and energy-efficient infrastructure," said CapitaLand and Mitsubishi Estate.
Mr Tan Tze Shang, chief executive of CLD (China), noted that Suzhou is a vibrant component of the Yangtze River Delta and key driver of China's economic development.
"The new business park will enable CapitaLand to further tap into the promising growth prospects of the Yangtze River Delta and support the group's pivot to new economy assets," he said, noting that CapitaLand has more than two decades of experience in Suzhou.
It is the developer and operator of two projects in Suzhou Industrial Park - Ascendas-Xinsu Portfolio and Ascendas iHub Suzhou. It also partnered a corporate entity of the park's government to launch Suzhou Center Mall - the largest mall in the city - and Suzhou Center Office in the western central business district of the park.
The latest announcement comes after Singapore and China inked 14 deals on Wednesday from their annual bilateral cooperation summit, the most in recent years despite the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
Mr Hirase Takehiro, chairman and president of Mitsubishi Estate (Shanghai), said: "Since Mitsubushi Estate Group entered China in 2011, we have successfully expanded our interests by investing in new projects across the country... We have witnessed the great economic development potential and charm of Suzhou, which has attracted a large number of Japanese enterprises."
CLD and Mitsubishi Estate also collaborated on the recently completed Singapore-Hangzhou Science and Technology Park Phase 3 in the Hangzhou economic and technological development area.
