For the first time in Sri Lanka one of the world’s fastest growing retailer chains, LULU Group International of UAE, will invest Rs. 3 billion to build a five-star hotel in Colombo and enter the leisure business.
LULU group Sri Lanka Consultant W. P. Perera said that they hope to start construction end of this year and it would be totally foreign funded project.”
He said that their main target is to attract up-market clientele and they also would try to get a large share of the expatriate population living in UAE to visit Sri Lanka.
The Colombo project will come under Twenty14 Holdings which is the hospitality investment arm of LULU. Founded in 2014, Twenty14 Holdings has invested over US$ 650 million in assets across the Middle East, U.K. and India.
“We are happy with the progress we are making in Sri Lanka and this is why we are investing in the leisure sector as well. We see huge growth potential in Sri Lanka,” he said.
The LULU Company has also set up Y.A.S. Lanka Pvt. Ltd., a Board of Investment (BOI) company at the Export Processing Zone at Katunayake last year.
As their first investment they had already invested US$ 20 million and inaugurated Sri Lanka’s largest food processing and export unit in Katunayake. This is sourcing high quality products from Sri Lanka and re exports them to LULU’s large chain of hypermarkets in the Middle East and in other countries.
The company hopes to purchase fruits vegetables and fish products from Sri Lanka to the value of US$ 25 million each year. “Annually this order would increase by around 20%.”
“Soon we intend to venture into retail sector with a world-class shopping mall and modern hypermarket in Colombo,” he disclosed.
“We hope to build around four malls in the first two years with reputed international companies taking retail spaces,” he said.
LuLu Group also launched one of the largest projects of its kind in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India.
Through a Public Private Partnership (PPP) route the group would set up an integrated project, comprising a 7000 capacity world-class convention center, shopping mall and a luxury hotel on the beach road in the Harbour Park area of Visakhapatnam.
LULU Group International has an annual turnover of over US$ 6.9 billion and employees over 45,000 globally. It has 145 branches around the world and one million billed customers per day in all supermarkets.
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