Frontken Corporation Berhad 200401012517 (651020-T) • A N N U A L R E P O R T 2 0 2 1 14 CHAIRMAN’S MESSAGE (CONT’D) Aerial view of Plant 2 at the Southern Taiwan Science Park, Kaohsiung In addition to that, we are also actively looking and in discussion to acquire new land for our next phase of expansion as we envisage there will be more work from our customers and that more space will be needed should Plant 2 runs out of capacity. This also echoes a large trend among chip manufacturers that are expanding their production and manufacturing capacity to meet the huge demand in the semiconductor space. We remain optimistic that our semiconductor business in Taiwan will continue to grow barring any unforeseen circumstances. In FY2021, we continued to increase our shareholding in AGTC to 91.79% from 91.25% a year ago. Frontken (Singapore) Pte Ltd (FSPL Plant 2), Singapore - Our semiconductor business in Singapore continues to face shortages of manpower due to continual border shutdown and numerous restrictions imposed by its government which caused delays in our operations and daily output. In spite of the marginal miss in revenue and profit targets, the results was still commendable considering the challenges our team encountered during the year. We have put in extra effort to alleviate the workforce shortages as much as possible such as prioritising and rescheduling all jobs, optimising our processes, customising and automating bottleneck processes. We focused on our Continuous Improvement and Productivity programmes (“CIP”) to improve on both quality and quantity of our workflow and processes. Our priorities remain the same during the year, which was to ensure a sustainable output and productivity level. We are also working with new and existing customers for new projects, processes and parts qualification. With major wafer fabs announcing their capacity expansion in recent months, we believe our business will improve further and that we will be able to benefit substantially in the very near future. Moving forward, we will continue with our strategic focus on CIP and automation projects to ensure consistent output, increased efficiency and less reliance on manual labour. FrontkenMalaysiaSdnBhd,Malaysia -Our semiconductor business in Kulim, Melaka and Kuching saw improvement in their revenue and bottom line compared to a year ago primarily due to the increased in sales to our existing and new customers. Our efforts of continual cost savings through streamlining our processes and tighter control over operation efficiencies have also contributed to the improved overall margins. During the year, we saw more contract manufacturers being registered into our new customers’ list as we managed to secure several new accounts mainly parts’ fabricators embarking into business with the Original Equipment Maker for semiconductors tool. The revenue increase from this segment almost doubled compared to the previous year. The sluggishness from Hard Disk Drive and Photovoltaic were also offset by the pick-up from the semiconductor and automotive industry. We saw increased activities from our customers from the latter and are encouraged by their upcoming expansion plans that will be completed in 2024. We will continue to work hard and look out for further growth opportunities while defending our position as one of the largest semiconductor chamber process parts service provider in the country. ENGINEERING DIVISION In FY2021, the oil & gas industry rebounded with oil prices reaching their highest level in recent years, attributable to the reopening of economies and businesses. Similarly, the Group’s engineering division saw a much improved revenue and PAT of 23% and 226% respectively during the year. We noticed significant improvement in our engineering segment in Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines coming in from our oil & gas, petrochemical and refineries customers.
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