LONDON: Dyson Limited, the world’s largest vacuum cleaner manufacturer, plans to expand its production facility in Malaysia, said its International and Commercial director Sir Richard Needham.
Describing Malaysia as a good place to do business, he said the quality of Malaysian engineers working at its production facility “is excellent and is at the highest order.”
On top of that, he said, the availability of engineers from the various racial group in the country presented a good cultural mix. Needham, who was British Trade Minister from 1992 to 1995, said Dyson had invested about RM500 million in its facility in Malaysia.
The company had just closed its manufacturing facility in China, and was taking steps to move them to Malaysia, particularly for its new products, he told reporters here.
The company also planned to move its engineering and design engineering to Malaysia, he said, adding that he would be travelling to Malaysia next week to prepare for expansion plan. He said the company had been manufacturing vacuum cleaners in Malaysia over the past 10 years through local sub-contractors.
Dyson controls 35 per cent of the world’s vacuum cleaner market by value and is the number one seller in United States, Europe, Australasia and Russia and number two in Japan.
Besides vacuum cleaner, he said, Dyson also produced hand dryers which dry hands in just 10 seconds and its Malaysian facility in Johor also produced bladeless fan which had sold out its three month production in Australia in merely one week. Needham said Britain and Malaysia had very long cultural, political and “family” ties.
Malaysia was a good place to do business with the availability of infrastructure and easy-to-talk-to Malaysian Industrial Development Authority and decision makers, he said. —Bernama
He would like to see the government remove the remaining controls on foreign exchange and felt that the court system in Malaysia which had about 60,000 outstanding cases, made it difficult to get judgement on certain issues.
He also suggested Malaysia, especially the southern states, and Singapore to lessen competition with each other and instead to cooperate with each other to attract investors. — Bernama