K20m CPL supermart
The National, Wednesday January 8th, 2014
By GYNNIE KERO
THE COUNTRY’S biggest cinema will be part of a K20 million supermarket complex owned by the City Pharmacy Group (CPL) opening in March.
Steamships Group of Companies built the complex and will be leasing it to CPL.
The new supermarket complex will be twice as big as CPL’s flagship Stop N Shop at Waigani Central, which has an area of 2,500sqm.
Chairman Mahesh Patel (pictured) said the new Waigani Central houses all the retail brands of CPL Group and a multiplex cinema.
“It (the complex) will also include a bookshop, full walk- in liquor department, pharmacy, digital shops and a new hardware concept store,” he said.
Patel said this would be the largest supermarket in the country with much bigger offerings of fresh food, seafood, grocery and foodstuff and non-food lines.
“We want our customers to be able to shop in a much-improved environment, with almost 600 car parking slots, advanced information technology (IT) applications such as in-store WiFi, apps for our specials offers, in-store interactive experiences, much-wider range of products at the best price,” he added.
He earlier told The National that Waigani Central should not be compared with Vision City, which was a mega mall, as this would be a stand-alone supermarket.
This 50,000 square feet supermarket is situated at the former Port Moresby Transport yard, just next to CPL’s Waigani Central Stop N Shop supermarket.
Patel said CPL aimed to learn from this investment and duplicate it with all its new projects.
CPL had established five strong retail brands such as City Pharmacy, Stop N Shop, Hardware Haus, BonCafe and HomeMaker.
In first quarter of 2012, it opened Paradise Cinema – PNG’s very first multiplex cinema, which is on the third floor of Vision City.
In 2011, the CPL Group had a combined retail operations of 54 stores nationwide, which employed more than 2,000 staff, of whom 95% were Papua New Guineans.
Its retail network spanned health and beauty chains, grocery, hardware stores, coffee shops and now a multiplex cinema.