Mall of Africa: Big, and it may get bigger
Tills keep ringing at Mall of Africa despite the oversupply of retail space that has hampered some other centres
The 130,000m² Mall of Africa in Midrand, the largest shopping centre ever to be built from scratch in SA, has exceeded trading expectations in its first year of operation, defying the sceptics who believed the mall would struggle given Gauteng’s heavily traded retail landscape. The R5bn centre, owned jointly by JSE-listed Attacq and developer Atterbury, has lured close to 15m shoppers since it opened on April 28 last year. That surpassed management’s initial expectation of 12m-13m visitors in the first year, says Attacq’s head of retail Michael Clampett. The mall has achieved sales turnover of R311.6m/month on average, which translates into a trading density (sales per square metre) of R2,630/m². Clampett says that’s comfortably ahead of the average R2,000/m² shopping centre that owners typically hope to achieve in a new mall in the first year. December was a bumper month, with trading densities peaking at R4,110/m².
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