Taiwan’s largest warehousing infrastructure developer Ally Logistic Property Co. Ltd. (ALP) is set to invest $1 billion in Malaysia to develop smart warehousing solutions to boost the nation’s logistics industry.
ALP said in a statement that its plans in Malaysia are already underway with the development of its $180 million 27-acre logistics park with a smart warehousing facility called OMega, in Bukit Raja, Selangor, the first of its kind in the country.
ALP Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Charlie Chang said, Malaysia’s supply chain industry represents vast opportunities that are yet untapped, and the large-scale investments and a sharing economy business model will see the industry experience a boom.
“The Malaysian market offers tremendous potential, and we are confident that our investment here will attract more regional players and other high-value investments to drive Malaysia’s aspirations towards becoming a regional e-commerce hub. ALP’s OMega introduces collaborative operating models to unveil new economic opportunities and spur growth for the industry while empowering local brands in their digital transformation journey to reach new markets and unlock wealth,” Chang added.
According to the statement, Malaysia continues to remain an attractive market for e-commerce with its gross merchandise value (GMV) projected to rise to $30 billion by 2025. Its E-commerce income also grew 23.3 percent year-on-year to 267.6 MYR million in the second quarter of 2021, driven mainly by the manufacturing and services sectors.
Meanwhile, the economic spillover from the OMega facility will see the creation of new growth drivers for the nation while supporting Malaysia’s Logistics 4.0 goals.
ALP Malaysia Managing Director Keren Liu said that the smart warehousing model that ALP is introducing in Malaysia will provide greater momentum for Malaysian businesses to be part of the global supply chain.
“ALP’s investment will help to create more job opportunities in Malaysia. With automation at the core of ALP’s offerings, we aim to enrich Malaysia’s warehousing infrastructure and advance convergence with global supply chains; this, in turn, will support Malaysia’s Logistics 4.0 ambition and strengthen its position as the preferred warehousing gateway in Asia,” she said.
ALP Bukit Raja OMega construction, which is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2024, will be part of ALP’s regional chain of warehousing facility networks and will capture the attention of multinational investors and brands looking to establish their regional distribution centers in Malaysia. Strategically located, OMega smart warehouses across Malaysia among others in the pipeline are expected to generate an estimated 3,000 job opportunities.
OMega is a multi-story, technology-integrated warehousing platform with hyper-automation built-in. It is designed to help not only Malaysian but also multinational brands and retailers achieve improvements in efficiency and greater accuracy in decision-making in response to the high volatility of e-commerce and vigorous development of digitalization.
Strategically located in the Bukit Raja Industrial Park, OMega will serve as a hub for distribution along the west coast of Malaysia with its immediate accessibility via the North Klang Valley Expressway (NKVE), the New North Klang Straits Bypass (NNKSB), and the West Coast Expressway (WCE).
Its proximity to the central business district of Kuala Lumpur and Port Klang, the principal port in Selangor, makes it an ideal destination for manufacturing and warehousing, especially for local and multinational brands. The facility will feature 1.2 million square feet (111,484 sqm) in leasable area with additional 100,000 pallets in the co-sharing automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) zone with a total of 150 loading docks.
The sheer magnitude of OMega also enables ALP to introduce a “shared warehouse” structure to offer flexibility to support its clients’ business expansion. Its scale also makes it possible to accommodate a complete industry vertical to shorten respective supply chains, accelerate turnover of materials and products, and reduce working capital and distribution costs.
Meanwhile, its automation solution supports the transformation of labor-intensive supply chains via data application and helps companies tackle the complexity of warehouse management to optimize business processes, gain time and improve cost-efficiency.
ALP has enjoyed great success since its inception in 2014 as one of the first smart warehousing infrastructure developers to offer automation and robotic solutions in Taiwan. It is now managing more than 500,000 square meters of warehouses and over $800 million in assets.
ALP has been expanding its services overseas to accommodate multinational clientele in each country they operate. In 2019, it began its Southeast Asia market expansion with the first subsidiary office set up in Malaysia which will be followed by neighboring countries including Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Beyond Bukit Raja OMega, ALP is looking at complementary developments in Malaysia as part of its $1 billion commitment.