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Frontken to further expand Kulim facilities |
Wednesday, January 24, 2007 |
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Frontken Corporation Bhd, a surface engineering provider in the semiconductor industry, will invest in another plant at its Kulim premises under the second phase of its expansion plan, its managing director and executive chairman Willie Wong said.
He said the new plant would cater to the increase in new projects as well as existing projects from its Singapore operations.
“We have pretty much fully utilised our first phase, which is currently running at 80% capacity,” he told reporters after the official opening ceremony of its RM25 million Phase 1 plant in Kulim by International Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Seri Rafidah Aziz on Jan 23.
“The investment in Phase 2 will be no less than the investment we made for Phase 1,” he said, adding that the floor space would probably be five times more that that of its current plant which has a built up area of 32,000sq ft.
“Realistically, Phase 2 should be operational by late 2008. By then, our Kulim headcount would probably be beefed up from 80 to 250 personnel,” he said
He added that in the long run, the company also had planned to construct a Phase 3 operation to fully utilise their landbank in the area, which stood at 2.7ha.
Frontken’s principal activities includes being a service provider of mission critical surface metamorphosis engineering and solutions, or metal surface treatment and finishing, utilising numerous thermal spray coating methods as its core technology.
The company now has five facilities across Malaysia and another five in the region – three in Singapore and one each in Thailand and the Philippines.
“At the same time, we are also looking out for new markets. We are concurrently studying many opportunities in countries such as Myanmar, Vietnam, Indonesia, China, the Middle East and India,” Wong said.
Wong said that business from the semiconductor industry accounted for 31% of the group’s turnover in 2005 with the sector likely to contribute about one third of the group’s earnings this year.
He said the firm, which is eyeing a transfer from the Mesdaq Market to the Main Board, was confident of its growth strategy which would come from developing existing and new technologies, working on more OEM partnerships, having more collaborative design and manufacturing activities as well as undergoing merger and acquisition exercises.
Earlier, Rafidah in her speech said that there were 40 licensed companies involved in the metal surface treatment and finishing industry with a total investment of RM373.6 million, of which 54% were local investments.
Source: theedgedaily.com |
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