34. WONG TEEK SON Flagship: Riverstone Holdings Ltd Net Worth: RM1.3bil

JOINING the glove tycoon league is 56-yearold Teek Son. Although not quite a newcomer, he is not so well known in Malaysia because his flagship company Riverstone is listed in Singapore.

He is the co-founder of Riverstone, one of the top nitrile glovemakers in the world, established since 1989.

Riverstone specialises in the production of cleanroom gloves and healthcare gloves, fingercots, face masks and packaging bags.

It has grown to become the leading latex medical examination glove manufacturer and global supplier of cleanroom and healthcare gloves.

He listed it on the main board of the Singapore Stock Exchange in 2006 and has served as its executive chairman since 2005. Co-founder Lee Wai Keong is the chief operating officer while brother Teck Choon heads the company’s business development.

Teek Son holds a Master in Business Administration from Monash University and a Bachelor of Science (Hons) degree from Universiti Malaya.

Their products are widely qualified and used in the hard disk drive semiconductor and healthcare industries in Malaysia.

It exports more than 85% of its products to key high-technology countries around Asia, Europe and the American region.

Riverstone has been growing extensively because of demand for its gloves. To cope with growing demand, it has increased its capacity by setting up a new manufacturing plant in Thailand in 2001 and another one in Wu Xi, China in 2004.

In 2010, it built a new plant in Taiping, equipped with only state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities.

Riverstone plans to add another 1.4 billion pieces of gloves by end-2019, boosting its total annual production capacity to 10.4 billion pieces of gloves. The group is completing the Phase 5 expansion plan at Taiping, Malaysia and expects to bring the group’s total annual production capacity to nine billion gloves.

In line with its expansion plans, the group has recently acquired three adjoining industrial land parcels measuring approximately 14.6 acres in the Larut Matang District for RM18.2mil.

The land will support the business expansion with the construction of new factories which house additional production lines.