KUALA LUMPUR: Top Glove Corp Bhd, the world’s largest rubber glove producer, is revising its 15-year investment plan by increasing it to RM3.8 billion from RM3 billion previously.
Its chairman, Tan Sri Lim Wee Chai, said this would include the cost of its 30,772-hectare rubber plantation venture in Sumatera, Indonesia. Lim said the company has set aside RM450 million over 14 years for the venture and expected positive cash flow in the tenth year.
“The first phase of planting will commence in October this year and the first tapping will be in 2020.
“This venture will help us stablise our financial performance if latex prices go up like in 2011 which risk our earnings,” he told reporters at the Invest Malaysia 2013 here yesterday.
He said its RM3.8 billion investment plan will comprise RM3.1 billion for the construction of 40 new factories, RM0.1 billion for investment in new information technology, RM0.15 billion for corporate building and RM0.45 billion for plantation.
Lim said Top Glove will have 25 factories by April next year with annual capacity of 47.7 billion pieces.
He expected the full-year financial result ending Aug 31, 2013 to be better than last year if the exchange rate and market condition were stable.
“We will recover soon because the US dollar is stronger than the ringgit now. The third-quarter result is just a temporary setback due to the impact of foreign exchange,” he said.
Top Glove’s pre-tax profit for the third quarter ended May 31, 2013 fell to RM43.373 million from RM63.683 million in the same period last year. — Bernama