Sustio Sdn Bhd in Batu Kawan Industrial Park

SIMMTECH, a South Korea-based global leading manufacturer for semiconductor packaging substrate and HDI Printed Circuit Board (PCB), held the grand opening ceremony for its Malaysia-based subsidiary, SUSTIO Sdn. Bhd. in Batu Kawan Industrial Park, Penang.

This new factory will be SIMMTECH’s first advanced manufacturing facility in Southeast Asia and the group’s eighth factory along with its other operations in Korea, China and Japan.

SUSTIO’s factory in Penang will increase SIMMTECH’s total capacity of substrate and PCB by 20 per cent, which will immediately contribute to improving the semiconductor industry supply constraint situation which can aptly address the needs among the industry players.

“Penang is pleased to see an emergence of players along the semiconductor supply chain, enabling the State to reap a myriad of benefits from the increased robustness of its well-developed industrial ecosystem. 

“Being the first major Korean investor from the semiconductor industry in Penang and a critical supplier for memory module PCB and substrate, the presence of SUSTIO is poised to bring greater opportunities for supply chain resiliency.”

“The State, via InvestPenang and other relevant state agencies, is committed to ensuring a versatile talent pool, supportive infrastructure and resilient industry clusters.

“These are among the imperatives for effective supply chain management and sustained competitiveness, all of which are believed to add value on SUSTIO’s operation in Penang,” Chow elaborated,” said Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow. 

Sustio plant in Batu Kawan overview

“We have already engaged with our key customers for the new site qualification programme and are expecting to start delivering mass volumes of substrate and PCB products to the customers from the second half of this year.

“SUSTIO factory’s commencement is just in time for the new DRAM technology transition (DDR5). We will ramp up this new site mainly for our DRAM and NAND customers worldwide. We are very grateful to Malaysia’s Federal Government agency through MIDA and Penang state Government agency, InvestPenang, for their tireless support to our project. We couldn’t have navigated our project under the challenging environment without them” said Jeffery Chun, the Managing Director of SIMMTECH SE ASIA.

In May 2021, SUSTIO broke ground on an 18 acre site at Batu Kawan Industrial Park investing more than RM600 million. Despite the lock down, the practical construction work took only nine months to complete, and the factory is now fully equipped and ready to run mass production.

SUSTIO has already employed more than 700 workers and it will reach its full employment of more than 1,000 employees by next year. The new Penang factory will deliver the first ‘Made in Malaysia’ semiconductor memory chip packaging substrate and module/SSD PCB, bolstering Malaysia’s semiconductor supply chain even further.

Also present was Kim Min Chul, SIMMTECH Group CPO, Mdm. Lim Bee Vian, Deputy Chief Executive officer, Investment Development, MIDA, His Excellency Lee Chi Beom, Ambassador of the Republic Of Korea, Chun Se Ho, Chairman of SIMMTECH, Ms. May Park, Director of SIMMTECH, Gursharan Singh, Senior Vice President, Micron Technology and Dato Seri Lee Kah Choon, Special Investment Advisor to the Chief Minister of Penang.