Keeping it fresh

Two Malaysian businessmen who have bought the Cold Storage and Giant supermarket chains in Singapore are no strangers to the Republic, they assure me. "I'm half-Singaporean," declares Mr Andrew Lim Tatt Keong, 68, a lawyer turned shopping mall owner. His mother's side of the family is from Singapore and he has many childhood memories of the family home in Armenian Street, he says. "My grandmother would take me to Cold Storage for ice cream. It was always a treat."

- Sumiko Tan

Mr Gary Yap Keng Fatt, 67, meanwhile, owns a retail solutions company that handles everything from store design to cashier points to warehouse equipment, and has done work for supermarkets and stores in Singapore for many years.

"Most of the fittings in Singapore's Cold Storage were done by us, in the late 1990s all the way to the 2000s," he says. "Before the acquisition, we were still supplying to them."

In fact, he had introduced black shelving to supermarkets here, he says.

In the late 1990s, while fitting up Cold Storage in Guthrie House in upmarket Bukit Timah, he broached the idea of having black shelves. "Supermarket shelves at the time were white or beige," he recalls. "Black was more elegant and would lift the shopping experience."

He says the outlet at Guthrie House was the first Cold Storage with such shelves, and the trend was adopted by other stores.

He has also supplied equipment to FairPrice and Sheng Siong, Mr Yap adds with a smile. These two big chains are now, of course, his rivals in the fiercely competitive supermarket scene.

On March 24, DFI Retail, which is part of the Hong Kong-based Jardine Matheson Group, announced that it was selling its Singapore food business to Malaysia's Macrovalue, which was founded by Mr Lim and Mr Yap.

This comprises 48 Cold Storage stores (under the Cold Storage, CS Fresh, CS Gold and Jasons Deli brands), 41 Giant stores and two distribution centres. The $125 million deal is set to be completed by the second half of 2025.

Macrovalue already owns the Cold Storage and Giant operations in Malaysia. It acquired them from DFI's Malaysian subsidiary, GCH Retail Group, in 2023.

I'm having lunch with the two men at the Japanese restaurant Kuriya Dining in Great World a day after the announcement.