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Amy Nip

For 26 years, the growing community at Discovery Bay has been waiting for someone to break the supermarket monopoly the ParknShop group enjoys there. 
Now their prayers for some competition to stem high prices have been answered - or have they? 
A second supermarket serving the 14,500-strong community on Lantau will open before the end of this year. It will be operated by  Dairy Farm, the group behind the other half of Hong Kong's supermarket near-duopoly,  the Wellcome chain.
 That is the same Wellcome the Consumer Council this year accused, along with ParknShop, of cheating consumers by raising the prices of items before offering 'discounts' that left prices higher than they were to start with.  
The council also found  that the chains charged the same prices on 55 of 375 items it checked in May. 
Still, long-term residents are looking forward to more choice.
'More options are definitely a good thing here,' said Madhu Kashyap,  a dance-school manager who has lived in Discovery Bay since 1985. Over the years, Kashyap has watched its ParknShop supermarket grow in size a few times and eventually become a Fusion by ParknShop  store.
Lately, the shop had made noticeable improvements, she said.
The downside? The prices seem to have increased.
Paul Chan, who has also lived there for more than 20 years, is also gladly anticipating the arrival of another supermarket. He too spoke of the pricing issue, saying many items at the high-end Fusion store cost more - as much as 30 per cent more in some cases - than at ParknShop stores in less well-off areas.
'Residents would like some other competition, some other company to come in,'  Chan said. 'This will help. It will definitely help.'
 Islands district councillor Amy Yung Wing-sheung said that the competition should 'automatically improve' Fusion's prices and service. 
For as long as Discovery Bay has existed, there have been complaints that the ParknShop store is fleecing customers. However, comparison shopping for some items likely to find their way into the shopping trolleys of its affluent residents suggests this could be more myth than fact. 
Prices at sister stores Taste in Wan Chai and Tung Chung were about the same as in Discovery Bay. (Fusion and Taste stores are revamps of former ParknShop Superstores;  operator AS Watson, part of Li Ka-shing's  Hutchison Whampoa, calls Fusion 'a new international Western superstore concept' and Taste  'a new generation of lifestyle food stores'. It has also restyled some ParknShops as International  stores.)
Cheese lovers will find mozzarella, mascarpone and ricotta are the same price in all three supermarkets. And an International store in Admiralty charged more for a litre of Pura  milk than the Discovery Bay store.
ParknShop did not respond to questions about the entry of a competitor to Discovery Bay. A spokeswoman said prices were the same in all areas except when there were special promotions.
A Dairy Farm  spokeswoman said its store would open in December.
The store will be in the Yi Pak  commercial centre near a new hotel in the northern part of Discovery Bay. Its name has not been finalised.
Not the dearest
The price of a litre of Pura milk, in HK dollars, in Discovery Bay's
Fusion by ParknShop: $29
Its price in International in Admiralty: $29.90



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