Malaysia’s national carmaker Perusahaan Otomobil Nasional (Proton) held a ground breaking ceremony for the construction of new stamping facilities in its Tanjong Malim vehicle assembly plant in Perak state.
The company is investing MYR253m (US$54m) to install two new lines to increase availability of stamped parts at the plant ahead of the transfer of production of its best selling Saga model from its Shah Alam plant scheduled for 2026.
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The new E and F stamping lines will help further increase production capacity at the plant after the company completed the installation of the D stamping line in March 2023. The additional capacity would help Proton add new models in the future, in addition to the new Saga, as well as reduce the company’s dependence on imported parts.
CEO Li Chunrong said at the ceremony: “The addition of the E and F stamping lines are critical to Proton’s future volume expansion, as they will give us more flexibility to ramp up production and meet market demand. For the whole of 2023 and up to June 2024 our Tanjong Malim plant stamped 6,067,064 components, of which 395,211 by the new D-Line, and this number will grow exponentially when Saga production is relocated here in 2026.”
Proton said the new E-Line would feature a four stage stamping process using one 1600 tonne and three 800 tonne stamping machines while the F-Line would have a five stage stamping process with one 2000 tonne, one 1200 tonne and three 1000 tonne presses. Robots would also be used to transfer parts between workstations, while IR 4.0 technology would be implemented using real time data and machine learning to improve the quality of parts produced.
Li Chunrong added: “As Proton moves towards consolidating its production operations in Tanjong Malim, we continue to work towards increasing our local parts sourcing. Aside from cost and parts security considerations, we will continue to champion the government’s aim to grow local participation in the automotive industry via job creation on multiple levels.”
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