Tractors Manufacturing & Assembly To Be Malaysia’s Leading OEM Of Heavy Equipment
Press Release
PASIR GUDANG, JOHOR, 30 April 2008 – Tractors Manufacturing & Assembly (TMA), a subsidiary of Sime Darby Industrial Sdn Bhd, is positioning itself to be a leading OEM of heavy equipment for international businesses and principals looking to expand their market in the Asia Pacific.
Sime Darby Industrial recently invested RM6 million to expand capacity in its existing assembly and manufacturing facility in Pasir Gudang, Johor, and to produce a wider variety of industrial products.
The TMA plant has established licensing and technical arrangements with world-class principals, and it manufactures selected models of prime equipment under the Caterpillar, Terberg and Omega brands, among others.
Mr Chong Kwea Seng, the Managing Director of Sime Darby Industrial Sdn Bhd., represented Dato’ Seri Ahmad Zubir Murshid, the President and Group Chief Executive of Sime Darby Berhad, to officially open TMA’s new 10-acre facility today. The plant has been upgraded to be a flexible and adaptable production facility.
The plant offers customers potential cost savings in transportation and logistics within ASEAN, preferential tariffs with local manufacturing for markets in Malaysia and ASEAN as well as competitive manufacturing cost. A strength of TMA’s is that the plant is able to design and customize optional features of industrial products to meet customer requirement.
Tractors Assembly & Manufacturing began its licensing and technical arrangement with major principals in 1983 by manufacturing selected Caterpillar attachments. It now holds licensing agreements to manufacture Caterpillar bulldozers and the Caterpillar soil compactors for the Malaysian and ASEAN markets respectively.
Up until December 2007, TMA has produced for Caterpillar around 500 units of the Cat 527 bulldozers and Cat 533 soil compactors, and more than 2,000 attachments for the D6D bulldozers and numerous other attachments for the Caterpillar range.
In year 2000, TMA established a partnership with one of Europe’s largest manufacturers of special purpose vehicles, Terberg Benschop B.V. It is currently a product source plant for Terberg terminal tractors for the Asia Pacific market.
To date, the plant has built and shipped more than 600 units of the Terberg vehicles throughout the Asia Pacific region.