Who Owns Macrovalue? The Malaysian Company That Just Acquired Singapore’s Cold Storage & Giant
Macrovalue is jointly owned by two Malaysian businessmen and entrepreneurs who has years of experience in various industries.
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On 24 March, Malaysian retail group Macrovalue bought all 48 Cold Storage stores under its CS Fresh, CS Gold, Cold Storage, and Jasons Deli brands, as well as 41 Giant outlets, and two distribution centres in Singapore for S$125 million from DFI Retail.
Scott Price, the group chief executive officer of DFI Retail Group, said Macrovalue is “ideally positioned” to drive the new growth phase for the Singapore food business due to its expanded scale and procurement power across Malaysia and Singapore.
DFI Retail will now focus on its Guardian and 7-Eleven business in Singapore since the health and beauty business make 55% of its total operating profit in 2024.
Since Macrovalue acquired GCH Retail Group, the operator of Cold Storage, Giant, and Mercato in Malaysia in 2023, the company now owns a chunk of supermarkets on both sides of the Straits.
Macrovalue also brought the ultra-luxe Japanese retailer SEIBU to Malaysia, now at The Exchange TRX.
This large acquisition has unsurprisingly made some curious about Malaysian-owned Macrovalue, especially the people behind the company.
Who owns Macrovalue and what do they do?
Macrovalue was founded in 2022 and is equally owned by Malaysian businessmen and entrepreneurs Datuk Andrew Lim Tatt Keong and Datuk Gary Yap Keng Fatt.
Lim, 69, was born and raised in Penang and has two children. His connection to Singapore comes from his parents who got married there.
Lim worked as a journalist at the Straits Echo before earning his law degree at University College Cardiff, Wales, in the UK and began his legal career by practising in his late father’s legal firm.
Lim, who grew up in a family of barristers, was a lawyer himself for twenty years. While working as a lawyer, he developed a deep interest in the retail industry.
As luck would have it, his father was a board member in GAMA Group, a local supermarket popular for its variety of imported goods from China, so he had a front-row seat to all things retail. He finally ventured into retail by buying into the GAMA Group in 2000.
In 2002, he spearheaded the management buyout of Sogo Kuala Lumpur from its Japanese owners and transformed the struggling mall into a profitable and thriving business.
Meanwhile, Yap, 67, ventured into the retail space in 1980 while working at the supermarket called Yu Yi.
He launched his supermarket in 1988 after the 1987 economic downturn and focused on competitive pricing.
By 1994, he expanded into design-and-build contracting, specializing in customized supermarket and hypermarket spaces.
In 1996, he began offering specialised construction and design services for major retail chains before venturing into real estate development, building a hypermarket designed for lease, in 2000.
He then founded RDS Marketing Malaysia which specialises in retail design and fit-out, leveraging his extensive experience in retail, construction, engineering, real estate, and supermarket operations.
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