Italthai Group announces Bt11-bn investment plan

Group chief executive officer Yuthachai Charanachitta announced the investment plan yesterday after opening "Italthai Expo", held at the Bangkok International Trade and Exhibition Centre to celebrate the group’s 60th anniversary.

As a central part of the expo, an "Infinite Opportunities" exposition targets customers and potential customers, business associates and university students, and showcases Italthai Group’s business portfolio, which is balanced between two sectors that are fundamental to the economy.

These are construction and construction equipment, which is tied to Thailand’s development and infrastructure projects; and hospitality and lifestyle, which is tied to the country’s globally competitive tourism offerings.

Yuthachai said the company had more than 30 pieces of heavy construction equipment on display, as well as its multiple offerings in the hospitality and lifestyle sector, making this the biggest exposition of its business that the company had ever organised.

"We hope that the exposition will give visitors a sense of the breadth and scale of our business as we ramp up our investments to capture the opportunities offered by the AEC [Asean Economic Community]," he said.

"In the era of the AEC, we have to be proactive to succeed, and we are leveraging both domestic and international opportunities," he added.

The chief executive said that of the Bt11 billion Italthai Group had announced as its planned investments over the next five years, about Bt3 billion would be invested this year.

To support Italthai Group’s goal to double revenues by 2019, its most recent initiative on the construction and construction equipment side of the business is the setting up of a rental fleet of more than 30 20-tonne Volvo excavators at a cost of Bt140 million.

The machines are to be offered to customers as a "total operations" package.

"In line with our strategy to focus on superior service to Thailand’s leading contractors, we will provide equipment and operators, as well as a full package of operational support, including maintenance, spare parts and other running requirements.

"This new, packaged offering will help contractors reduce their start-up investment and the cash-flow burden on their project, as well as completely eliminate a customer’s need to manage the operations of such equipment," he explained.

Yuthachai also said that in the first quarter of this year, Italthai Group had been awarded construction contracts for renewable-energy projects worth Bt4.9 billion, with a total capacity of 177 megawatts, of which wind farms account for 90MW and solar farms for 87MW.

Pushing into India

On the hospitality and lifestyle side of the business, Italthai Group has begun an aggressive push into India, aiming to operate at least 10 properties in India, Sri Lanka and Maldives by 2022 as part of its goal to become a leading hospitality operator in the Asia-Pacific region.

He confirmed that Italthai’s Onyx Hospitality Group would begin construction next year of an Amari-branded hotel as part of the World Trade Centre Noida project, about 20 kilometres southeast of New Delhi in Noida city. Noida has the highest per-capita income in the National Capital Region of India.

The property will have 120 rooms, 30 branded residences, three restaurants, meeting and convention facilities, and a Breeze Spa.

Onyx will also begin construction next year of an Amari Residences project that will offer 120 serviced apartments together with a restaurant, pool and fitness centre in Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT), near Ahmedabad.

The project is a part of the GIFT World Trade Centre development.

Onyx currently operates 38 properties with 6,257 rooms, with a further 18 properties under construction.

The goal is to exceed 100 properties in the next five years, said the CEO.