Dr Loo Choon Yong, Chairman of JTC
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
Introduction
1. Good afternoon. I am pleased to join you today at the launch of JTC Space @ Tampines North, a next generation industrial facility for companies in the manufacturing sector.
Manufacturing – Helping SMEs Seize New Growth Opportunities
2. The manufacturing sector continues to be a key growth engine for Singapore’s economy. Last year, it provided more than half a million jobs and contributed about a fifth of our economy.
3. SMEs are an integral part of the manufacturing eco-system. Currently, we have about 9,400 manufacturing SMEs in Singapore. Many of them play an important role in supplying bigger companies with services such as metal moulding and fabrication of machine parts. Some of the more successful SMEs are now supplying complex sub-assemblies, or even directly designing and manufacturing end products for their customers.
4. With the emergence of new manufacturing technologies, such as additive manufacturing, and the rapid growth of economies in Asia, there are abundant opportunities for SMEs. Therefore, SMEs have to upgrade their capabilities, up-skill their workers and innovate, so that they can keep up with the intensifying global competition and seize these growth opportunities.
5. At the same time, we are aware that many SMEs are facing the challenges of high business costs and manpower constraints. The Government has provided substantial support, through a wide range of schemes and programmes, to help SMEs restructure so that they can remain competitive. We will continue to do so – to help create the conditions for SMEs to grow and thrive.
Innovative Space Solutions to Support Manufacturing SMEs
6. To meet the evolving needs of SMEs in the area of land use, JTC will develop more innovative space solutions for key industries within the manufacturing sector. The benefits are two-fold. First, such projects help our SMEs reduce their business costs, raise their productivity and enhance their overall competitiveness. A common feature among JTC’s latest projects is that they co-locate companies operating along different parts of the same value chain within a single development. This clustering of activities promotes interaction among the companies, encourages the cross-pollination of ideas and facilitates business collaboration.
7. Some projects will also have shared facilities, which help SMEs reduce their capital expenditure and operating cost, lower their manpower requirements and reap greater operational savings. For example, the JTC Surface Engineering Hub, which was recently completed, includes a centralised wastewater treatment plant. Another example is JTC MedTech One @ MedTech Hub includes sterilisation and warehousing facilities.
8. The second benefit is that these space solutions help to enhance our overall land productivity, which is important, because land is a scarce resource in Singapore. Some of these projects intensify land use through innovative structural features. For example, JTC Space @ Tanjong Kling[1] is a three-storey development with structural provisions for SMEs to install their own preferred goods mover systems. This enables SMEs to move their goods across different floors more efficiently, thereby allowing production activities that are traditionally carried out on a single floor to be, in fact, spread across three floors, without the need for the SMEs to make extensive structural modifications. As a result, the development uses a smaller land footprint compared with the traditional one-storey Standard Factories, but provides SMEs with the same amount of space. SMEs therefore benefit from lower land rentals, without having to settle for less space.
9. Other projects help our land-based companies transition to high-rise space. JTC Space @ Tampines North is one such project. As Chairman of JTC shared earlier, this high-rise, multi-user development features high technical specifications, such as higher floor loading, which would allow to accommodate companies that traditionally operate in land-based factories. Moving from ‘land’ to ‘space’ not only enhances overall land use, but also presents a good opportunity for SMEs to redesign their processes and to reconfigure their production layouts to achieve higher labour productivity.
10. I am also happy to learn that the higher specifications and flexible design of JTC Space @ Tampines North will also enable it to cater to the needs of new industries such as additive manufacturing and robotics, which is in line with the Government’s ongoing efforts to develop advanced manufacturing technologies and capabilities in Singapore.
Conclusion
11. Singapore is entering a new phase of development. We are transforming our manufacturing landscape, to position ourselves as the advanced manufacturing hub in the region. This will open up many new and exciting opportunities for our companies as well as our workers. The Government will continue to partner manufacturing sector and companies, especially SMEs, to tap these opportunities for growth.
12. JTC Space @ Tampines North is a good example of JTC’s efforts to provide innovative space solutions to support the transformation of our manufacturing sector. On this note, let me congratulate JTC on the launch of this project, and I wish all our companies every success in your respective ventures.
Thank you.
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