Sinar Mas Group plans major China investment

Sinar Mas Group plans major China investment

SHANGHAI (AFP): Indonesia's Sinar Mas Group, one of the world's biggest Chinese-owned companies, said Saturday it plans to invest three to five billion dollars in China in the next three to five years.

Sinar Mas director Frankle Widjaja told reporters that the bulk of the investment would be in pulp and paper projects though the group's New York-listed subsidiary Asia Pulp and Paper Company.

The company is already the largest single pulp and paper manufacturer in China with a 600,000-ton annual capacity plant in Ningbo in eastern Zhejiang province.

A new plant was being built in Zhenjiang in eastern Jiangsu province which would produce 1.5 million tons of pulp and paper when completed in two years, Muktar Widjaja, another company director, said.

Muktar Widjaja said the company was applying for approval to double production at its Ningbo plant and to build a 1.15-million-ton plant in southern Hainan island where it planned to plant 300,000 hectares (741,000 acres) of trees.

When the plants came onstream, the group would be able to supply 30 to 40 percent of China's pulp and paper needs, he said, adding that market was growing at a rate of 10 to 20 percent annually.

The Sinar Mas group is the largest pulp and paper producer in Asia outside Japan.

The group Saturday broke ground on a 410-million dollar commercial office tower in Shanghai's central business district and opened the Shanghai representative office of its wholly-owned Bank International Ningbo.

Frankle Widjaja said the group would provide equity financing amounting to US$235 million for the building while the remaining $175 million had been raised through a syndicated loan.

The 45-story Bund Finance Centre, located close to Shanghai's waterfront Bund, is purpose-built to serve the financial and business communities in Shanghai and was scheduled for completion in the third quarter of 1999.

The building comprises 88,000 square metres (946,800 square feet) of high quality office space including space for six retail banking halls on its ground floor, a retail podium and service apartments.

The project is being developed by Shanghai Golden Beach Real Estate Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of SMG, which has a property portfolio of about $1.5 billion worldwide.

The Sinar Mas Group, which was established in Jakarta about 40 years ago by Eka Tjipta Widjaja, has since grown to be the seventh largest Chinese group in the world and one of two leading companies in Indonesia.

The group, which has a net asset of about $15 billion and employs 150,000 people worldwide, is involved in pulp and paper manufacturing, financial services, agriculture and property development.

Its investment in China has reached $3.5 billion in more than 200 enterprises and it plans to base its China headquarters in Shanghai, officials said.