Greenland Holding looks to cross-border e-commerce in drive to diversify into non-property businesses

Shanghai-based Greenland Holding Group, one of the mainland’s three largest property developers, is speeding up diversification into non-property businesses and seeking to bolster a newly launched cross-border e-commerce trading platform.

Greenland said it initially targeted annual sales of 2 billion yuan (HK$2.36 billion), taking a substantial step toward tapping increasing demand for foreign-made consumer products among mainlanders.

“An established trading system could help more than quadruple the sales volume and we envision sales of about 10 billion yuan in 2017 to 2018,” said Xue Yingjie, executive deputy general manager of Greenland’s commercial business division. “The growth potential is huge.”

Greenland chairman Zhang Yuliang is striving to create new growth engines for the developer as the company faces a downgrade to its credit rating due to high leverage.

In mid-June, Fitch Ratings lowered Greenland’s standalone rating to BB from BB+ since its net debt-to-adjusted inventory ratio reached 66 per cent at the end of 2015, higher than expectations of 58 per cent.

The Shanghai-based developer accelerated expansion into finance and consumer-orientated sectors in line with the mainland’s ambition to stoke consumption as a driver of the economy.

The bonded zone in Qingpu district, the city’s second-largest cross-border e-commerce platform links with Greenland’s five procurement hubs abroad to offer logistic services to electronic retailers.