Risks in sale and leaseback

With ams Osram vacating the facility, a white elephant will soon emerge in Kulim High Tech Park and it is left to be seen how this investment by the GLICs will turn out.

IT was a seemingly sweet deal for some top Malaysian government funds last year when a multinational with a history of setting up factories in Malaysia was seeking an investor for its new plant.

Osram Opto Semiconductors Sdn Bhd, wholly-owned by Austria-based ams Osram, was building what it claimed would be the world’s first fully automated 8-inch LED and micro LED manufacturing facility. This was next to their existing plant at Kulim Hi-tech Park. MicroLEDs are LEDs that are very small, and they can be used to make displays for phones, smartwatches, and TVs.