Top US retailer Target Corporation, which set up a sourcing centre in Shenzhen in September, said its procurement from the mainland is expected to double from last year.

"After achieving a 100 per cent increase last year over the previous year, our procurement from the mainland is expected to double again this year (despite a larger base) by value," Chris Huber, a director of Target Sourcing Services, the sourcing arm of Minneapolis-based Target Corp, told China Daily yesterday.

"A 50-to-75-per-cent year-on-year growth can be expected in 2004," he added, noting China is a key sourcing market for the company's US outlets.

According to the latest US National Retail Federation's Stores magazine, Target Corp was ranked the fourth-largest US retailer, with sales of US$42.7 billion, after Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Kroger.

It operates large-store general merchandise formats, including more than 1,200 Target discount stores, 267 Mervyn's moderate-priced department stores and about 60 Marshall Field's upscale department stores.

Target, which focuses on the US market with the number of new stores growing at 10 per cent annually, does not have expansion plans outside the country but will cut costs with direct sourcing, said Huber.

About half of the non-branded merchandise, compared with the current 20 per cent, will be directly imported through AMC, a wholly-owned sourcing subsidiary of Target Corp which has more than 50 offices worldwide, by 2006, he said.

To have quick access to the mainland market, especially the manufacturing base in Guangdong Province, AMC set up a sourcing office in Shenzhen in September. It has a long-established sourcing centre in Hong Kong.

The number of staff, including sourcing managers and people who are responsible for quality control and production checks, will rise to 200 from the current 100 by the end of 2004, said Lawrence Chan, vice-president of AMC's Asia sourcing centre.

"We have taken three floors in the newly-built World Finance Centre in Shenzhen, but still reserved two floors for future development," said Chan.

Huber is on a visit to Shenzhen to attend the ongoing Second China (Shenzhen) Commodities Procurement Fair which has attracted some 100 foreigner retailers and 10,000 buyers from home and abroad.

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