Jhapa to join Bhairahawa, Kathmandu
Boutique casino developer Silver Heritage Group Ltd. has acquired a 74,500-square-meter (18.4 acres) parcel of land in Nepal for its second resort, the firm announced in an August 27 filing to the Australian Securities Exchange. Price tag for the plot in Jhapa, in the eastern part of Nepal, was US$3.2 million.
Silver Heritage’s flagship Nepal property, Tiger Palace Resort Bhairahawa, launched in December. The firm also runs the Millionaire’s Club and Casino in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, and the Phoenix International Club, near Hanoi, Vietnam.
According to GGRAsia, in a prospectus for its 2016 initial public offering, Silver Heritage said it’s banking on Indian consumers to cross the border to gamble in Nepal.
A prior attempt to purchase a 115,000-square-meter plot in Jhapa was unsuccessful, said the filing, because “the company had no ability to fund the remaining purchase price.” Since then the group has “worked closely” with the original vendor to complete the purchase of a “reduced parcel of land by utilizing in full the initial deposits paid by the company.”
The new resort, with the working name Tiger Palace Resort Jhapa, is located near the country’s border with the Indian states of Bihar and Sikkim, and is also close to the Bangladesh border.
In the filing, Silver Heritage said it has agreed to sell a “circa 20 percent interest in the Jhapa land-owning entity to its local partner Mr. Sanchit Shrestha, a transaction which both generates the required capital to compete the purchase while also reducing its outstanding supplier payables.”
The company also announced it will accelerate operations at the Tiger Palace Bhairahawa resort, which should reach “monthly break-even” in the third quarter of 2018.
