Relaxing land use regulations would ease warehouse shortage

Relaxing regulations regarding land use for special industries such as shipbuilding and manufacturing of polystyrene plastics may be an efficient way to ease the shortage of warehouses, according to industry experts.

As these industries have largely shifted across the border, sites are underused.

In the past two years, only two sites designated for logistics and industrial purposes have been sold by the government, which mainly focuses on selling residential land to ease the city's housing shortage.

"There are three large sites in Tsing Yi South that are not fully used," said Alnwick Chan, an executive director at Knight Frank.

Of the three, the biggest one is a 3.1 million square foot site that is currently used as a dockyard for shipbuilding, ship repairing, cargo handling and storage and repair of containers.

The other two sites with areas of 129,168 square feet and 350,605 square feet are reserved for manufacturing of polystyrene plastics, and making and assembling industrial equipment.