A listing alongside manufacturing expansion
Smart Asia Chemical Bhd joined Bursa Malaysia’s ACE Market on May 28, 2024. The paint and coatings manufacturer opened at 50 sen a share, compared with its initial public offering price of 40 sen. Opening trades covered 9.73 million shares.
The stock finished its first session at 46 sen, six sen above the offer price. Across the full trading day, 74.07 million shares changed hands, placing the company among the five most actively traded counters. The opening volume and the full-day turnover describe different parts of that session.
Smart Asia linked its expansion to demand for painting products while acknowledging stronger competition. The company put its market share at approximately 0.59% and estimated that full utilisation of the Perak plant could lift it to 2.6%. That larger share remained conditional on using the facility’s capacity.
Smart Asia’s listing-day plans linked the public issue to additional manufacturing and distribution equipment.
How the proposed funding was allocated
Smart Asia targeted RM37.4 million from an issue of 93.50 million new shares at 40 sen each. At the May 2 prospectus launch, the company set out three major uses for the proceeds:
- RM16 million to help finance construction of the Perak plant;
- RM11 million towards buying and commissioning its automated paint-production system;
- RM5 million for 250 sets of Smart Colour point-of-sale tinting machines.
The balance was earmarked for working capital and listing expenses. These allocations described intended uses of the issue proceeds. The construction allocation and the equipment allocation were separate parts of the financing programme.
The new site in Batu Gajah followed capacity constraints at the existing Johor facility, which the company said was fully utilised. Perak’s calcium-carbonate resources and access to customers in central and northern Malaysia formed part of its location rationale.
The 95,170-square-foot development included a two-storey factory, a single-storey warehouse, offices and utility facilities. Its manufacturing focus was water-based decorative paints and protective coatings.
The Perak plant’s production systems
Smart Asia inaugurated the Batu Gajah facility on May 9, 2024. At the opening, the company anticipated an increase of 27 million litres in annual manufacturing capacity, against an existing capacity of 8.71 million litres at the end of its 2023 financial year. The increase concerned capacity rather than measured annual output.
The plant combines an Industrial Tinting System with an Automated Paint Production System. Under the arrangement in MIDA’s plant-opening release, raw materials move from storage to dispersion tanks, while semi-finished products pass between processing stations.
Tinting within the manufacturing flow
Automation also covers loading, unloading and quality checks. The company expected the linked software and tinting equipment to maintain a continuous manufacturing flow and reduce reliance on human operators.
Smart Asia’s product range includes colourants used to obtain the required paint shades. Its brands include Smart Paints, Durra Paints, Toplus Paints and Hunter Paints, alongside the group’s broader portfolio of decorative paints, protective coatings and complementary paint products.
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