Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB) inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA) to further collaborate in the promotion and facilitation of activities relating to the KLIA Aeropolis and Subang Aerotech Park development.
The signing agreement between YM Raja Azmi Raja Nazuddin, the acting Group Chief Executive Officer of Malaysia Airports and Datuk N. Rajendran, Deputy CEO of MIDA took place at the MIDA HQ.

The main objective of the MoU is to explore potential areas of collaboration between Malaysia Airports and MIDA to facilitate foreign direct investments into Malaysia via promotion and implementation of investments that would achieve value accretion to the national economy – focusing on the KLIA Aeropolis, a flagship airport city development within the 100-square kilometer of KLIA land in Sepang, Selangor, and the implementation of the Subang Airport Regeneration Initiative.

KLIA Aeropolis, which is centred around three core clusters, namely Air Cargo & Logistics, Aerospace & Aviation, and Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (“MICE”) & Leisure, shall focus on the off-terminal real estate development that is synergistic with Malaysia Airports' existing airport operations. The catalytic project under the Air Cargo & Logistics cluster to develop 60-acres of land for the ASEAN regional eCommerce with Cainiao, the logistics arm of Alibaba, is set to double KLIA's air cargo volume from 0.7 million tonnes per annum to 1.3 million tonnes per annum by 2028.

According to Raja Azmi, "KLIA Aeropolis will draw additional passenger and cargo traffic to KLIA beyond its organic growth rate via catalytic projects. This will contribute to global competitiveness of Malaysia by enhancing activities centred around increasing connectivity."

Malaysia Airports is also embarking on the Subang Airport Regeneration Initiative, which is a strategic initiative to revitalise the Subang Airport ecosystem, where Subang Airport is envisioned to be positioned as a vibrant city airport, a hub for business aviation and a complete aerospace ecosystem.

The Subang Aerotech Park has been identified as a key catalyst to the aerospace sector in Malaysia and poised to be positioned as the leading aerospace hub within South East Asia. Subang Aerotech Park has many strategic advantages with its growing ecosystem maturity, vicinity to the KL city centre, excellent transport network, highly accessible amenities and an urban population supplying ready-manpower. Key initiatives and promotional programmes are mapped out to attract the aerospace companies and populate the earmarked land area.

"The regeneration initiative at Subang Aerotech Park upon completion will increase high-value job creation to circa 5,000 jobs,” Raja Azmi said.

Both the KLIA Aeropolis and Subang Airport Regeneration Initiative shall be carried out in alignment with Malaysia Airport's goals and aspirations in championing the Industry 4.0 principles, where state-of-the-art facilities and advanced technologies e.g. automated and digitized facilities systems, green technology, and high-specification build-to-suit facilities to be integrated within a synergistic ecosystem development.

“MIDA acts as a conduit by working with entities such as MAHB to bring together the industry and other stakeholders to create fresh and exciting collaborations. We are confident that these efforts will contribute in the long term to provide a conducive environment for businesses to thrive. Understanding the needs of our investors, we seek to not only promote the development of industrial ecosystems but also to ensure that the enablers are in place. This include having the right infrastructure and facilities in place to cater to the requirements of businesses, particularly those that are value added, capital-intensive, knowledge-intensive and can provide quality business and job opportunities to Malaysians,” said Rajendran.

“By working with key developers such as MAHB, MIDA is able to better facilitate the interest of investors. Meanwhile, MAHB is able to leverage on our close relationship with the industries. Through this partnership, we look forward to providing more options to our investors in their selection of sites. We trust that it will translate to more quality investments coming in to Malaysia, particularly for the logistics and aerospace industries, as well as other supporting industries,” added the Deputy CEO I of MIDA.

Today, Malaysia is home to more than 200 companies involved in maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO), aero-manufacturing, education & training, systems integration and engineering & design activities. For the first 3 months of 2018, the aerospace industry registered approved investments of RM175.4 million from 4 manufacturing projects and RM8.59 million from 1 MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) project.

Malaysia Airports is actively working with partners such as MIDA to create value through synergistic collaboration to facilitate the requirements of global multinational companies in operating their facilities within the KLIA Aeropolis and Subang Airport development locations. This is a key enabler for Malaysia Airports to ensure successful investment plans as evidenced in the collaboration with foreign investors such as Cainiao Network and Mitsui Fudosan.

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