MALAYSIA: Top Glove's new plants will boost yearly capacity to 45 billion units

“The new factories, with factory number 29 situated in Klang, will help further boost our capacity to 45 billion per annum,” said its chairman Tan Sri Lim Wee Chai after the company’s corporate presentation at Invest Malaysia 2014, in Kuala Lumpur.

According to data on the company’s website, Top Glove’s production capacity as at October 2013 was 43.9 billion units per annum from its factories in Malaysia, China and Thailand.

“We are always building either one or two factories a year, so this increase in capacity is in line with our expansion,” he said.

He remained optimistic of the company’s outlook this year despite a slight decline in last year’s revenue at RM2.3 billion, which was attributed to a lower average selling price on the back of declining raw material costs.

“It was a case of supply and demand. There was an abundance of supply and in order to get rid of the existing supply, we had to make the price very competitive,” Lim said.

However, he stressed that the outlook is still positive for the company because rubber gloves are recession-proof and there will always be demand.

Top Glove is currently the world’s largest rubber glove manufacturer, with more than 1,800 customers worldwide and it exports to more than 185 countries.

Source: “New Straits Times”, Kuala Lumpur; 11 June 2014
(Syed Rashid Ali, Karachi, Pakistan)