This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on April 6, 2020

KUALA LUMPUR: Berjaya Corp Bhd (BCorp) has confirmed that it is embarking on a new property development project in Greenland, and that it will have apartment units for sale and a hotel that will carry the group’s ANSA brand.

The hotel, however, will be a three- to four-star hotel and not a luxury one, it said in a statement to The Edge Financial Daily.

The project will address the increased demand for accommodation facilities once the new airport in Greenland’s capital of Nuuk is completed, it said, but did not disclose the costs of the project nor its gross development value.

“The opportunity for property development investment in Greenland enabled the group to expand its business footprint within close proximity to Iceland.

“BCorp already has a 75% stake in Icelandair Hotels ehf, which currently operates 20 hotels located all around Iceland,” it added.

The conglomerate said its investments in the two Nordic countries increase its presence in the European region, in line with BCorp’s geographical diversification and revenue expansion. “They represent good long-term investment value for the group despite the current challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic,” it added.

Last Thursday, theedgemarkets.com, quoting High North News, an independent English newspaper in Norway, reported that BCorp was embarking on a luxury hotel and apartment project in Greenland. The report was also published in The Edge Financial Daily the following day. The Edge had previously reached out to BCorp on the matter, but did not receive any comment.

According to the foreign news report, BCorp founder and executive chairman Tan Sri Vincent Tan Chee Yioun had initially planned to have the hotel built at the Kolonihavnen harbour but was rejected by local authorities. 

“Local authorities have now suggested two new locations for a potential hotel, none of which have been disclosed to the public,” the High North News wrote, citing an article by Greenlandic national newspaper, Sermitsiaq — a bilingual paper published in Danish and Kalaallisut.

In December last year, Berjaya Hotels & Resorts (BHR), a member of BCorp group of companies, announced the official opening of its ANSA Okinawa Resort in Okinawa, Japan. BHR also manages the ANSA Kuala Lumpur located in Bukit Bintang.

It was reported at end-2018 that BCorp had plans to carve out the hotel assets from its subsidiary Berjaya Land Bhd (BLand), in which it controls a 70.32% stake, and float the assets in Singapore. The move would also see BLand be taken private.

A month later, Tan said the group had a few hotel assets it had no intention of divesting, including Berjaya Times Square Hotel and ANSA Kuala Lumpur. These hotels, he said, were mostly in Malaysia and that the group planned to operate them for the long term.