Construction work on the 155,000 sq ft Etele Plaza in Budapest has begun. The mall, combining unique architectural solutions and digital services, will feature more fashion brands in one place than any other shopping centre in Hungary. The shopping and entertainment centre is expected to open in 2020. The area
China Hongqiao Group, the world’s largest aluminium producer has decided to expand its operations and improve overall capacities; a move in stark contrast to the reduced usage rate of aluminium and the weighed on prices for the light metal. As to why, we can only assume that the group maintains
Construction work on the 155,000 sq ft Etele Plaza in Budapest has begun. The mall, combining unique architectural solutions and digital services, will feature more fashion brands in one place than any other shopping centre in Hungary. The shopping and entertainment centre is expected to open in 2020. The area can be accessed in only 10 minutes from downtown Budapest via direct links as it is being constructed in the meeting point of a national/international railway station, underground line 4 that connects the area with the inner parts of the city and the entrance section of the M1 and M7 highways that lead towards Austria and Croatia. Estimated to attract around 40,000 customers every day from the capital, the suburbs and the further towns, Etele Plaza will have a modern design with 200 store units, a supermarket, restaurants, cafés, a multiplex cinema, a gym, a children’s play centre and a range of other services with nearly 1,300 parking lots. The exterior design of the shopping centre will be dominated by the largest curtain wall structure of Hungary – with a height and width of 30 meters – above the main entrance and the retracted metal boxes that jump out from the facades. In the internal area, along with the soft tracing, a nearly 200 square meter interactive LED display interface will bring the latest generation of the shopping centre design to Hungary. In the immediate vicinity of the eco-friendly shopping and entertainment centre, Futureal Group’s largest and iconic office development project, Budapest ONE Business Park is being built in Őrmező. Budapest ONE was one of the firsts in Hungary to obtain the international WELL Building Platinum Precertification, which focuses on the aspects having beneficial impacts on employees’ health and well-being while designing the buildings. “The construction of Budapest ONE and Etele Plaza will give a new momentum to the most important centre of South West Budapest,” said Tibor Tatár, CEO of Futureal.
China Hongqiao Group, the world’s largest aluminium producer has decided to expand its operations and improve overall capacities; a move in stark contrast to the reduced usage rate of aluminium and the weighed on prices for the light metal. As to why, we can only assume that the group maintains a positive outlook on the sector despite the bleak picture painted for many of its rivals, and with the group seeing a 39% annual increase up to 2015 despite production cuts, this would be of no real surprise. The expansion plans include an overall increase in capacity to 6m tonnes this year, building upon the already-considerable capacity of 5.19m achieved last year – this figure may vary depending on market conditions, of course, as the company’s Chief Executive illustrates: “If demand is good, we will stick with the plan. If not, we can slow down new capacity expansion or even suspend it.” It is predicted that some $2.3bn will be spent on the capacity improvements, which will see the refurbishment and retrofitting of some of the company’s coal-fired power plants in line with China’s new regulation for carbon emissions. Of course, with one of the primary reasons for the success of Chinese aluminium smelting revolving around the provision of cheap power and production costs, how these changes will affect China Honquiao is uncertain at this point. Hongquiao is also one of the few smelters in China to have set up the capacity to purchase excess inventory, a move which has been noted to support aluminium prices. Critics, however have cited that this has been unable to resolve the growing supply and demand imbalance of aluminium however, and with the group increasing overall production capacity, this imbalance is only expected to increase in severity. Only time will tell how this move will pay off for China Hongqiao, yet, it is still great to see some organisations maintaining an optimistic view of the market and determinedly pushing for growth.