Direct marketing venture expected to lose about $720 million

Jimmy Lai Chee-ying's direct-marketing venture adMart, expects to lose about $720 million before it starts generating a profit.

Since June, adMart has sold and delivered discounted groceries, mobile phones and computers, which provoked retaliatory price cutting by supermarket chains Wellcome and ParknShop.

Hit by setbacks that included supply breakdowns and the discovery it had sold fake wine, adMart was losing about $30 million monthly, vice-chairman Andrew Chow On-kiu said.

'This is no surprise. Apple Daily lost money in the first couple of years and now it is profitable.

'We have been expecting adMart to lose about [$30 million] a month in its first two years of operations.' He said adMart was facing 'a lot of problems', some of them 'insoluble', but the board had no intention of folding it.

'Committing mistakes is a problem,' he said. 'We learn on every mistake.'