Hong Lai Huat plans to develop its 10,000ha Cambodia-Singapore agriculture hub in three phases. The first phase, which will start at the end of the year until 2024, will see improvements in network, electricity and water supply infrastructure. This will see the construction of infrastructures such as a solar farm, warehouses, cold chain facility and food processing factories. Some land has also been set aside for the mining of granite and marble.
Food security is a big topic of discussion at present, especially amid the Covid-19 pandemic and with growing awareness about environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. Governments worldwide are going all out to ensure food supplies remain secure if another pandemic were to break out while companies are jumping on the food security bandwagon to capture a slice of the business. However, one company that had started looking into the issue of food sustainability even before the pandemic made the headlines is property and agriculture developer Hong Lai Huat.
In an interview with The Edge Singapore, Dylan Ong, group general manager and executive director of Hong Lai Huat, says, “We started planning our agriculture hub (agri-hub) several years ago. Back then, there was not much talk on food security and support in our development of a 10,000ha farmland in Cambodia into an agriculture hub. But then Covid-19 happened and our plans were expedited and governments started becoming more interested in what we were doing.”
