The wholesale retailer failed to hold on as a standalone consumer brand the first time it entered the Philippines, and its return through Ayala Land tests whether that has changed.
Makro Philippines has been here before. The wholesale chain first entered the country in 1996 through a joint venture involving Ayala, SM, and Dutch parent company SHV. Ayala sold its stake in 2004. By 2009, SM had taken full control and quietly converted every Makro store into SM Hypermarket. The brand did not fail loudly. It just stopped being Makro.
Almost two decades later, Makro Philippines is trying again, this time without SM in the picture. Ayala Land has signed lease agreements for four new stores inside its mixed-use estates: Cloverleaf in Balintawak, Broadfield in Biñan, Arca South in Taguig, and Evo City in Kawit. The operating partner this time is CP Axtra, the Thai company that runs Makro and Lotus’s across the region. None of the stores are open yet. Ayala Land is targeting a rollout between the fourth quarter of 2026 and the first quarter of 2027.
What Killed Makro Philippines the First Time
The simplest explanation for the 2009 conversion is that SM had every incentive to fold Makro into its own hypermarket network once it owned the majority stake. But the harder question, the one this comeback has to answer, is whether large-format wholesale ever actually built a loyal household customer base on its own merit, or whether it survived mostly as business-to-business procurement that happened to let regular shoppers in the door too.
Filipino grocery habits in the late 1990s and 2000s ran on frequency, not volume. Wet markets, sari-sari stores, and weekly supermarket runs shaped how households bought food. Bulk buying at warehouse scale asked shoppers to change both their storage habits and their cash flow timing, paying more upfront to save per unit later. That is not a small behavioral ask, and there was little competitive pressure at the time forcing anyone to make it.
Why Ayala Land Is Betting the Timing Is Different Now
The four sites Ayala Land picked are not neutral. Cloverleaf, Broadfield, Arca South, and Evo City sit inside or beside residential and commercial catchments that are still filling in, not established districts where shopping habits are already locked. At Arca South, Makro Philippines will operate inside the existing Ayala Malls building rather than as a separate structure. At the other three sites, Ayala Land keeps ownership of the property and collects lease income while Makro runs the retail side.
That structure tells you something about how Ayala Land is treating this format. It is not being launched as a flagship consumer play. It is being embedded into estates that already generate mall traffic, condo occupancy, and office demand, with wholesale grocery added as one more reason for people already living or working nearby to stay inside the ecosystem rather than drive elsewhere.
The Consumer Behavior That Has Actually Changed
What is genuinely different from 1996 is the shopper, not just the format. S&R normalized membership warehouse shopping over the past two decades, particularly among urban households with cars and freezer space. Grab and food delivery apps normalized buying in larger, less frequent batches. Condo living pushed dual-income households toward fewer, bigger grocery trips instead of daily market visits. The behavioral groundwork that Makro Philippines needed in the 1990s and did not have now exists, built by other brands.
That does not guarantee adoption. It means the market has done some of the work Makro Philippines could not do alone the first time. Whether four estate-based stores are enough to convert that existing behavior into loyalty for this specific brand, rather than reinforcing S&R or supermarket chains that already hold the habit, is the actual test here.
A Comeback With Better Conditions, Not Guaranteed Ones
Makro Philippines is not entering an empty category. It is entering one where the consumer behavior it needed decades ago now belongs to competitors who built it patiently while the brand was gone. The estate positioning gives it built-in foot traffic and property backing that the 1996 run never had. What it does not have yet is proof that Filipino households will choose Makro Philippines specifically, over the habits S&R and the supermarket chains already own.
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