Special business park in region will cater to their needs
By CHEN HUIFEN
(SINGAPORE) Start-ups and SMEs will have a place in Iskandar Development Region's flagship Medini region alongside the bigger boys who are picking up their choice plots of land across the Causeway.
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| Small is big: Iskandar's SME business park will give attention to those which may not have the resources or need to have their own buildings |
There will be a business park dedicated to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) that may not have the resources or need to have their own buildings and the master planner is looking for partners to get the project going.
'When you actually sit down and speak to the SMEs, you quickly realise that not many have the finance and the resources to come and buy their plot from us and build their own building,' said Keith Martin, CEO of Global Capital & Development (GCD), which holds the concession to develop Medini.
'So what we are trying to do now is seek investor-developer partners to set up SME business parks. So we're actually facilitating the provision of SME business space.'
Medini is one of the five zones within the Iskandar Development Region. It rests between the Straits of Johor in the south and Horizon Hills in the north. The area has already drawn investment commitments from some of the bigger firms, including Raffles Education Corp, Management Development Institute of Singapore, Parkway Holdings and Europe's Pinewood Studios Group.
The SME business park will sit in the Medini Business District, one of four development projects in the Medini region. To illustrate that the area will be flexible to the needs of the users, Mr Martin pointed to one of the complexes, which will have two office blocks connected by a large corridor that is naturally ventilated. Units within the block will be modularly built to provide greater flexibility in the sizes required by different types of SMEs. GCD is looking for commercial space operators and investors, and is casting its net in the region as well as the US and Europe.
Mr Martin thinks there will be interest because of the real demand that will be driven by anchor investors, such as Pinewood Studios Group. The TV and film production company, which is behind works such as James Bond, Harry Potter, Batman and Superman, has committed to invest RM400 million ($165 million) in Medini by 2013. The presence of Pinewood Iskandar Malaysia Studios, projected to create 3,000 jobs, is expected to draw complementary services providers including the likes of creative designers, costume makers, audio professionals and stylists.
SMEs involved in the media industry will see the opportunities to have a presence alongside Pinewood Studios, reckoned Mr Martin. But the business park could also be relevant to those engaged in high technology, research, product development, business processing, telecommunications, call centres and data centres.
'We're looking more for the service-oriented SMEs,' he added.
GCD is promoting Medini as a node for companies looking for a dual platform: one in Medini and the other in Singapore or Kuala Lumpur. Mr Martin noted that in the past, Singapore firms have largely expanded their operations further afield to places such as China, India, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand because there did not exist an option such as Medini.
He said: 'So I think we'll see a significant change in the SME mindset because they can see now that this platform exists just across the Causeway, without having to overstretch themselves by going a step too far, possibly in some examples like India or China. Of course there have been some success stories in those expansion ... but generally, wouldn't it just be easier to drive across the Causeway to see and visit your factory, or your SME that is expanding?'
Medini is also a focal point for joint development by Khazanah Nasional and Temasek Holdings. The two sovereign wealth funds from Malaysia and Singapore are joining hands in co-developing two plots of land in the Medini Lifestyle and Medini Living zones.
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