Tag Archives: Singapore Industrial

Jurong Island weighs options as land runs out

Choice between floating facilities, land reclamation to be made soon

Jurong Island is running out of land and Singapore will decide early next year on how to augment space at the oil and petrochemicals hub that houses biggies such as ExxonMobil and Shell. One option is to build large floating facilities there to store oil, while further land reclamation is another possibility.

As it is, 75 per cent of the island’s 3,000 hectares has been taken up or reserved by oil and petrochemical investors, a JTC Corporation spokeswoman told BT yesterday, adding that ‘JTC is in discussions with companies for the remaining 25 per cent’.

It was only last Friday that JTC celebrated the completion of Phases 3 and 4 of reclamation, which added 1,500ha and doubled the total land available at the highly integrated island complex. And so far, 95 investors have ploughed in more than S$31 billion there so far.

But already, some companies which had earlier postponed investments because of the global downturn will be resuming their projects soon, JTC chairman Cedric Foo said last week, without citing names. Continue reading

Industrial property rents fall for 4th straight quarter

But Q3 drop is smaller than Q2’s; gap with office rentals narrows

PRIVATE industrial property rents fell for the fourth consecutive quarter in the three months ended September, although the pace of declines eased.

Data from DTZ Research shows that the average gross monthly rental value for first-storey private conventional industrial space fell 2.4 per cent to $2 per square foot in Q3 from $2.05 psf in Q2.

The drop was smaller than the 6.8 per cent slide seen in Q2. Similarly, the average rent for upper-storey space slipped 5.9 per cent to $1.60 psf in the latest quarter, smaller than Q2’s 8.1 per cent.

DTZ noted that the rental slide for high-tech industrial properties, which include business park and science park space, also moderated in the third quarter. After a 12.8 per cent drop in Q2, the average monthly rent for such space declined 5.9 per cent to $3.20 psf in Q3.

From their peak in Q3 last year, average monthly rents of first-storey and upper-storey private conventional industrial space have slipped 14.9 per cent and 22 per cent respectively. The average high-tech industrial rental value has lost 28.9 per cent over the same period. Continue reading