Highly skilled workers lead Safran to choose Malaysia
SEREMBAN: The abundant supply of highly skilled workers is among the reasons why Safran, the world’s leading supplier of carbon brakes for commercial airplanes, chose Sendayan near here as its base for the Asian region.
Safran set up its factory, Safran Landing Systems Malaysia Sdn Bhd, which specialises in the supply of carbon disks for commercial airplane brakes in 2013, to address the rapidly growing needs of the airline business in the region.
This is the Safran’s third factory after the existing facilities in France and the United States.
General manager Kenny Chang said location was also a key factor in choosing a base for the company’s operations.
“Part of the reason we need to be in Asia is because we want to be next (adjacent) to our airline customers. Sendayan is also really close to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
“Today, we can deliver our brakes within four days to customers. This is a remarkable achievement for us,” he told Bernama.
Chang said the business-friendly government policy is another reason why Sendayan was the preferred choice for the group.
“We received a lot of help from government agencies such as the Malaysia Investment Development Authority and the state government’s investment arm, the Negeri Sembilan Investment Centre.
“From the time we initiated the business, we have received much support in terms of receiving approvals and such from the authorities.They constantly engaged and helped us to build the business here.
“Overall, whether it was with environmental regulations or anything else we had to comply with, there was good guidance and support from the local authorities,” he added.
On production, Chang said the factory, which employs 120 local skilled workers, has reached its maximum capacity of 300 metrics tonnes of carbon disks annually.
“The factory can still grow to an additional 30 per cent from its current capacity,’ he added.
Currently, Safran has about 130 airline customers in Asia, with its biggest being AirAsia.
Meanwhile, Fadli Mohd Amar, an engineer who has been with Safran since the establishment of the factory in 2013, said it was a blessing to work with a world class company.
“I was one of the earliest engi-
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neers recruited. This gives you the picture that locals can also effectively compete with others on the international stage.
“The opening of the Safran plant at that time had a major impact, as Malaysia’s airline industry was also then on the rise,” he added.
Safran is among the world class companies operating in Negeri Sembilan, besides others like Coca-Cola Bottlers (M) Sdn Bhd and Japan’s Kayaku Safety Systems (M) Sdn Bhd, which is among the world’s main supplier of car airbag inflators and micro gas generators in seatbelts.
Negeri Sembilan successfully attracted foreign and domestic investments amounting to RM27.42 billion from 2004 to 2017. Foreign investors came in at a whopping 71 per cent or RM18.13 billion.
According to the state government, South Korea was the largest investor with investments of RM5 billion, followed by Japan (RM1.8 billion), China (RM1.2 billion), Singapore (RM1.1 billion) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) (RM1.0 billion).
The five main industry sectors were electrical and electronics involving investments of RM4.9 billion and the creation of 7,730 jobs, followed by non-metallic minerals (RM3.4 billion, 3,555 jobs) and chemicals and chemical products (RM2.8 billion, 2,843 jobs).
In the Barisan Nasional’s (BN) manifesto for the 14th General Election, the party pledged to continue to attract high tech investments to open up more high skilled jobs for locals.
BN also promised to create a new high technology industrial area of 404.69 hectares, within five years, based on clean technology. — Bernama