White Sand Beach Residential Complex , The Spinnaker Condominium - Planned to Start January 2008

Announced recently is the White Sand Beach Residential Complex comprising a five star hotel, low rise condominium and two high rise condos called The Spinnaker Condominium. Good news to hear of some more developments on this stretch of the coast. This area should attract more Bangkok Thai investors who generally shy away from the 'seedy' image of Pattaya City.

Curious to note that this announcement comes just a matter of a couple of weeks that the prestigious project The Sails, which is to be the White Sand's neighbour, has been 'Put on Hold'

Apex Development Plc, formerly known as Sun Tech Group, expects to generate 6.3 billion baht in sales from developing the White Sand Beach residential complex in Pattaya from 2008-10. Apex chairman Pongphan Sampawakoop said the company would spend four billion baht to develop the 56-rai plot of land on Jomtien Beach in Pattaya.

"We plan to use our working capital of around one billion baht and borrow the remainder from banks to develop the Pattaya project," he said.

White Sand Beach, located next to The Sails and the Ambassador Jomtien Hotel, will comprise The Spinnaker high-rise condominium, The Island Lagoon low-rise condominium, as well as a five-star hotel with 300 rooms, which would be managed by the Mavenpick hospitality chain from Switzerland.

The Spinnaker has two buildings; the 42-storey North Tower and the 45-storey South Tower with the total of 303 units facing the sea. Selling prices start at 95,000 baht a square metre. The Island Lagoon includes a total of 240 units starting from 75,000 baht per sq m. Sales of the two zones will begin by the middle of next week.

Construction is due to start in January and would be completed in 24 months for the low-rise condominiums and 36 months for the high-rise condominium and hotel.

Mr Pongphan, who has 30 years' experience in the real estate business, led a group of investors to acquire a 78% stake in Sun Tech, which was completed early last month. Sun Tech, a steel manufacturer owned by the well-known industrialist Sawasdi Horrungruang, has already exited its business rehabilitation plan.

Apex now has property development as its core business. Amornsakdi Ketcharoon, senior vice-president of The Brooker Group Plc, the company's financial adviser, said Apex was preparing to improve its balance sheet by reducing the share par value to one baht from 10 baht each. The share premiums would be used to clear accumulated losses of 1.9 billion baht.

After the capital reduction, the company's registered capital would be around 1.3 billion baht, from the unusually high level of 13 billion baht currently.

"We're building our profits over the next three consecutive quarters or a year, so that we can seek approval from market regulators to resume trading of our shares, which have been suspended since 2000," he said.

After the company's shares resume trading, Mr Pongphan said, Apex would then be in a position to pay dividends to shareholders as well.

The five major shareholders of Apex are Mr Pongphan, who holds 23.54%, Tropical Holdings has 22.74%, Puangchan Sampawakoop 8.4%, Ekpong Na Ranong 8.02% and Thaiseri Property Co 4.96%.