TTM Technologies to invest US$130m in Penang plant
Manufacturing facility is Nasdaq-listed company’s first in Southeast Asia, and will create 800 jobs over 3 years
BUKIT MERTAJAM: Nasdaq-listed TTM Technologies Inc, which will establish its first Southeast Asian manufacturing plant in Penang, has earmarked a capital investment of US$130 million (RM550 million) through 2025.
Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow said construction of the facility is expected to commence next month and pilot production is scheduled to begin in the second half of 2023.
“This investment is expected to create 800 jobs over a period of three years, in the manufacturing of advanced printed circuit boards (PCBs) such as high layer count and high-density interconnect (HDI),” he told reporters after the groundbreaking ceremony of TTM’s manufacturing plant here yesterday.
TTM CEO Tom Edman said this upcoming facility would mark a first for TTM as it traditionally built the company through acquisition. However, it has chosen to commit a significant capital to a greenfield facility in Penang instead.
He said with a greenfield facility, it planned to start from the ground up with a real Industry 4.0 approach to PCB manufacturing.
On that note, he said the decision to set up this greenfield facility in Malaysia, particularly in Penang, was to meet its customers’ demands for supply chain resiliency, facility volume capability for high-tech PCBs outside of China as well as Malaysia’s infrastructure capability.
Meanwhile, TTM executive vice-president and chief operating officer Phil Titterton said the upcoming manufacturing facility here would be its most advanced plant due to it being a greenfield facility.
“We decided to invest here because the technology, talent and engineering in the area are a plus, however, a differentiator in favour of Penang was the seamless coordination by InvestPenang and the Malaysian Investment Development Authority (Mida) in moving things along, despite the country being in a movement control order at the time,” he added.
The new plant would serve TTM’s global commercial markets including networking communications, data centre computing, and medical, industrial, and instrumentation. — Bernama