KUALA LUMPUR: Supermax Corporation Bhd is confident it can break into the US$7.5 billion global contact lens wholesale market once its manufacturing plant for the lenses gets necessary International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) certifications and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals by third quarter of 2016.
Supermax Corporation Group Managing Director Datuk Seri Stanley Thai said that the company's UK and Hong Kong units (Supermax UK and Supermax HK) will help the company to enter the European Union market as well as the lucrative Asian markets of Japan, China, and South Korea.
The company's contact lense plant, located in Sungai Buloh, Selangor, can produce 40 million lenses a year at present. This will be ramped up to 70 million in 3Q 2017, he said.
The contact lens business marks Supermax's entry into high-end manufacturing, being the first Malaysian company to make contact lenses.
The company core revenue is generated by the sale of rubber gloves. At present, its glove-producing capacity is 23.5 billion units a year. With the completion of factories number 11 and 12, the two newer plants will bump up the figure by another 5.6 billion units of rubber gloves.
Thai spoke to the media at Invest Malaysia 2016 today.