SM Investments Corp. (SMIC) said on Monday that it will be forming a joint venture with the Lim family-owned Waltermart Group of Companies.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, SMIC said that through subsidiaries, SM Retail Inc. and SM Prime Holdings Inc., it has entered into a joint venture with the Waltermart Group. No other details were disclosed.

Waltermart Group, an operator of supermarkets and community malls, has 17 establishments located in the provinces of Batangas, Laguna, Cavite, Bulacan, Pampanga and Nueva Ecija, and Metro Manila. Walter Mart’s affiliates include appliance and electronics stores Abenson and ElectroWorld. 

SMIC, on the other hand, owns SM Prime Holdings Inc. the Philippines’ dominant mall developer and operator.

In the previous month, SMIC opened its fifth mall in China, which brings about a total of 51 SM malls both in China and Philippines.

In a statement, the company said that it is scheduled to open SM City Chongqing located in Southwest China, the company’s fifth shopping mall in China, after SM City Xiamen, SM City Jinjiang, SM City Chengdu and SM City Suzhou.

SM City Chongqing is the sixth mall that was opened by SM Prime in 2012, after SM City Olongapo in Zambales, SM City Consolacion in Cebu, SM City San Fernando in Pampanga, SM City General Santos in South Cotabato and SM Lanang Premier in Davao.

SM Prime completed all its programmed expansions for 2012 and now has a total gross floor area of about 6.3 million square meters.

SM’s forming a joint venture with the Waltermart Group comes after the Lucio Co.-led supermarket chain Puregold Price Club Inc. announced that it is looking to expand in the Visayas and Mindanao in 2013.

Puregold President Leonardo Dayao earlier said that for this year, they will focus in expanding in Mindanao and the Visayas. 

“We will continue our expansion both organic and geographically, we should expand not only in number of stores but also geographically,” he said. 

Puregold Investor Relations Chief Jimmy Perez said that they are eyeing six prospective provinces in Visayas where they can put up several stores.

He said that those provinces are Panay, Negros, Cebu, Bohol, Leyte, and Samar. For Mindanao, Puregold will launch the close to 1-hectare Puregold store in Cagayan de Oro and the P1-billion S&R outlet in Davao, which signifies its plan to expand aggressively in the region. 

As for the Puregold store in Cagayan de Oro, Dayao said that it might open in the third quarter of 2013.