Sierra Cevital, the joint venture between Sonae Sierra and Cevital for the provision of development and property management services to third parties in the Algerian shopping centre sector, has signed three new contracts for the provision of leasing and property management services with Immobis (Cevital's real estate subsidiary).
The shopping centers to which Sierra Cevital is providing leasing services are Uno Shopping Centre Mostaganem, Uno Shopping Centre Ain Defla and Uno Shopping Centre Bouira. Together they entail 40,390 m2 of Gross Lettable Area (GLA), 92 shops, including 22 restaurants, and 2,700 parking spaces. This way Sierra Cevital will provide its experience to shopping centers that are expected to open in the end of 2012 and in the beginning of 2013.
For Fernando Guedes de Oliveira, Sonae Sierra's CEO, "These contracts enable Sonae Sierra to strengthen its expansion in North Africa where we already were providing development services to three new Shopping Centres projects in Morocco."
For Salim Rehrab, Director of Cevital, "Cevital's objective in this partnership is to develop local know-how to ensure the autonomy of this joint venture, and to foment the professionalization of shopping centre management geared at providing our clients and our tenants with quality services. This in turn will stimulate the modernization of the shopping centre sector by offering new opportunities to all players seeking to take part in this process of expansion."
Trade mission to Algeria for Portuguese, English and Italian brands
At the same time, Sierra Cevital is organizing, with the support of the Portuguese embassy in Algeria, a Trade Mission to this country of the Maghreb from the September 25 to September 27.
This trade mission is aimed at some of the major retailers of Portugal, UK and Italy with the purpose of showing the existing business opportunities in Algeria for opening franchises in the three shopping centers that Sierra Cevital is leasing.
Mondo Italia Gallery, Pandora, Lanidor and After Shock are some of the retail firms that will travel to Algeria with Sierra Cevital to learn firsthand of the opportunities to expand their business that are offered in this emerging market with economic growth.
Significant market opportunities.
For the shopping centre sector, Algeria is an attractive market with 36 million inhabitants, of which 60% is under 30 years old. In addition, the country is undergoing rapid economic development and has a shopping centre industry with great growth potential, due to the relatively low Gross Lettable Area per inhabitant - 5 m2/1,000 inhabitants - in comparison to the European Union, which is at 226 m2/1,000 inhabitants.
In macroeconomic terms, Algeria's economy presented a GDP growth rate of 3.6% in 2010, and is expected to achieve an annual growth of 3.5% before 2013.
Source: Sonae Sierra
