Mr Lee Yi Shyan at the Opening of Wieland Werke’s Copper Cold Rolling Mill

SPEECH BY MR LEE YI SHYAN MINISTER OF STATE FOR TRADE AND INDUSTRY AT THE OPENING OF WIELAND WERKE’S COPPER COLD ROLLING MILL ON 8 OCTOBER 2007 AT 4:30PM

Mr Harald Kroener

Chairman of the Executive Board, Wieland Werke

Distinguished Guests,

Ladies and gentlemen

Good afternoon.

Introduction

Thank you very much for inviting me to join you at this happy occasion of Wieland Werke’s opening. My congratulations to all of you who have worked hard to make this new facility in Singapore possible.

Precision engineering is the backbone of Singapore’s manufacturing sector. It enables Singapore to move into more complex manufacturing activities such as equipment building, tooling and machining which in turn support the growth of many key industry clusters such as semiconductor equipment, medical devices, and the aerospace, marine and offshore sectors.

Precision Engineering Excellence

The development of precision engineering industry could be traced back to the early 70s.Since then, the industry has progressed with advanced capabilities. For instance, our industry now has the ability to make ultra-precise molds with sub-micron surface tolerances, aerospace parts that require multi-axis complex machining, and even medical components that need automated clean room manufacturing. With such capabilities, we have been able to achieve global leaderships in several manufacturing sectors – for example, 25 per cent of the world’s hard disk media and 10 per cent of the world’s output of refrigeration compressors, to name a few, come from Singapore.

Singapore continues to attract sophisticated manufacturing investments because of our advanced precision engineering capabilities. Just last month, Heptagon Micro Optics opened their first mass production plant which uses their unique and disruptive wafer scale production of micro lenses. Separately, Form Factor broke ground for its US$200 million Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (or MEMS) probe card manufacturing plant, which is its first outside the US.

Looking ahead, Singapore’s precision engineering industry must continue to capitalize on its existing strengths and build new capabilities. We have identified 3 areas in which our capabilities can be further enhanced:

First, technology. Singapore offers a robust intellectual property regime and strong R&D infrastructure. The precision engineering industry can leverage these to upgrade, or develop new cutting-edge capabilities. Our research institutes, such as Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (or SIMTech) and Institute of Material Research & Engineering (or IMRE) stand ready to work with precision engineering companies to undertake joint research for new capabilities.

Second, manpower. With a solid base of precision engineering talents which we have built over the last 30 years, we have to continually upgrade the skills of this talent pool. This is so that they are updated, and can handle the latest technologies and operate fully-integrated tool rooms or highly-automated manufacturing systems. Towards this end, EDB has a number of training schemes such as INTECH to assist companies in their manpower development efforts.

Third, market knowledge. Our precision engineering industry must be sensitive to new market trends and the re-alignment of international supply chain across geographies. They will enhance their competitiveness if they are able to move up to support higher value added products, new emerging industries and new markets. If they diversify their products and markets, they will be better shielded from cyclical downturns in any one particular industry or market. Towards market diversifications, companies can work with IE Singapore to establish new contacts, suppliers and buyers.

Conclusion

Today, we witness the opening of Wieland Werke’s S$100mil copper cold rolling mill. This facility, which is Wieland’s first such facility in Asia, is dedicated to support Wieland’s growing electronics customer base in the region. This facilities also adds a new and niche production capability to Singapore’s precision engineering industry. I would like to thank the management of Wieland Werke for your confidence in Singapore. We look forward to a long lasting and fruitful partnership with you in many more years to come.

Thank you.