Roxaco aims for the big league

MANILA, Philippines - From being a niche player, Roxaco Land Corp. has set its sights on a much higher goal – that of immediately being a mainstream property development company and being one of the top five developers in the country in 10 years’ time.

In an interview with The STAR, Roxaco senior vice president Santiago Elizalde identified three industry segments that they would focus on: the first home affordable housing market, the second home-resort market, and pocket developments within Metro Manila.

Roxaco was established by publicly listed Roxas & Company initially to develop the huge land bank of the Roxases. The group started with a 30-40 hectare-development in Nasugbu, where most of the lands of the Roxas family are located, called Landing Commercial Subdivision.

Roxas and Company is also into sugar business. It has interests in Roxas Holdings, also a publicly listed company that owns Central Azucarera Don Pedro, Inc. (CADPI), Central Azucarera dela Carlota, Inc.(CACI), and Roxol Bioenergy Corp.

The Roxas family’s landbank, according to Elizalde, is now under 3,000 hectares including the land on which the CADPI mill is located, stretching from Batulao to Nasugbu in Batangas.

Then in 1995, the Punta Fuego leisure resort and residential project broke ground. Roxaco has a joint venture company with Landco called Fuego Land Corp. which is involved in the development of Terrazas de Punta Fuego. Roxaco also owns part of Club Punta Fuego.

The company has also sold out a few years’ back 32-hectare project also in Nasugbu involving lands owned by the Roxases. The Palm Estates consisted of 950 open lots.

It has likewise finished Phase I of The Orchards at Balayan, an affordable housing project, wherein about 85 percent of the lots have already been sold. Phase II involves selling a combination of open lots as well as house and lot packages. Phases I and II cover seven hectares.

So far, all projects that have been undertaken by Roxaco are in Western Batangas, which Elizalde said still has a housing backlog of about 30,000 units.

And because Roxaco has basically been a regional player, it was considered as a niche player and very low key.

But all this is about to change.

The new Roxaco

Elizalde revealed that from being largely a niche player, Roxaco now wants to head to different directions and be a “multi-product developer.”

“This year, we will be ramping up. We want to be aggressive but at the same time stay within the bounds of what the market wants,” he said.

Building on its 15 years of involvement with the highly successful Punta Fuego project, which unfortunately is more known as a Landco project rather than a partnership with Roxaco, the latter is spending about P600 million within a two-year period to develop what could be considered Roxaco’s first foray into the second home-resort market.

Anya Resort Residences, a joint venture project with landowner VJ Properties, just broke ground and will be the first leisure project that Roxaco will be undertaking, not as the landowner this time, but as the developer.

The six-hectare project in Tagaytay incorporates an open lot residential portion with a resort component.  But unlike Punta Fuego, Anya’s major attraction which is the resort will be available not only to the lot owners and owners of the private villas, but also to the hotel guests. “But the spa and restaurant will be open to the public,” he added.

Elizalde said the resort would have an award-winning pool, a destination spa, as well as a destination restaurant. The hotel, consisting of 20 to 30 suites of between 50 to 60 square meters each, will be managed by Fuego Hotels, the same group that manages Pearl Farm in Davao, Seven Stones in Boracay, Club Punta Fuego, among others.

The company said it will finish with the development of the residential  component of Anya third quarter of next year, to be followed by the resort amenities a year after.

He revealed that Roxaco wants to develop Anya into a high-end leisure brand. “We will start with Anya Tagaytay and maybe have a few more others in some of the major tourist destinations in the country. We want to develop the brand just like what the Aman group did for its different resorts all over the world,” he said.

Among the areas being considered by Roxaco as future homes of the Anya group of resorts and residences are the top five tourist destinations, in particular, Panglao, Busuanga, and Boracay.

“We are currently doing due diligence on some of the prospective sites and in three years’ time, we will probably have our second project geared for the second home-resort market carrying the Anya brand,” Elizalde said.

New opportunities

Another opportunity for growth being explored by the company is in the area of pocket developments within Metro Manila, consisting of one to two hectare properties consisting of townhouses or medium-rise condominiums.

“We see value in small pocket developments that are well-done,” Elizalde said, adding that among the sites being considered are Pasig and Quezon City.

For the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2010, Roxaco has allocated close to P600 million for capital expenditure, allocated for Anya, Phase 3 of  The Orchards project consisting of nine hectares which the company hopes to start middle of next year (costing about P100 million) , and two projects in Metro Manila.

Meanwhile, to further boost its first home-affordable housing group, Elizalde said they are looking at properties to develop in Sta. Tomas, Lipa. and Malvar in Batangas. “Roxaco intends to establish significant presence in the real estate industry in Southern Luzon and eventually nationwide,” the company said.

According to Elizalde, from being a regional player having focused its developments mainly in Western Batangas, Roxaco is gearing itself to become a national player.

“The Roxaco name is something that we want to develop as one that is synonymous to reliability, quality, and value for money. But aside from this, we also want to have brands for the three industry segments that we will be focusing on. We will have ‘Anya by Roxaco Land’ as our high-end leisure brand for our resorts group and probably have separate brands for the two other segments,” he said.