Earlier this month, Makro, a well-known wholesale supermart based in Bangkok, Thailand, began putting up signs on the zinc walls surrounding its sales office in Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district, advertising its imminent opening at the end of the year.

Sam Oeun, the resident engineer at the construction site, said the local team was hired by the Thai management to oversee the construction of the large-scale warehouse outlet.

“Based on the architecture of the supermarket, the entire structure will be made out of metal. It will be huge and sprawling, but it won’t be tall,” he told Post Property.

“Once completed, the building will only stand two storeys high,” Oeun said, adding that the slated completion schedule for the supermarket would be in November.

This marks Thailand wholesale retail conglomerate Siam-Makro’s debut outlet in Cambodia, after it entered into a $2 million joint venture last September with prominent businessman and ruling party senator Ly Yong Phat’s LYP Group. Investing 70 percent of the total venture, LYP Group holds the remaining 30 percent, according to online publication Cambonomist.

It sits on a 5-hectare plot, with the actual building measuring 128 by 102 metres. The remaining land will be dedicated to parking lots. Makro is set to become the biggest warehouse and wholesale market in the Kingdom, and will not rent stalls within the vicinity to outside parties.

Niradey, project salesperson of Makro, explained, “It will become the biggest wholesale supermarket with genuine and high quality products that are cheaper than any other in Cambodia.”

She added that the company would be importing most of its products from Thailand to be sold at wholesale price at the supermarket.

Nevertheless, there would also be an equal distribution of Cambodian goods.

However, products are not limited to only food items as the wholesale outlet will also carry non-food goods which will all be sold at low-cost bulk prices.