Asia Aerospace City Offers Opportunities For Local Players To Flourish

from Nor Baizura Basri SINGAPORE, Feb 20 (Bernama) -- Asia Aerospace City (AAC), which is in the midst of construction in Subang, in the Malaysian state of Selangor, will pave the way for local players to tap into the lucrative aerospace industry, the Malaysia External Trade Development Corporation (Matrade) said. Its academic portion is already 90 per cent completed as the government gears up for the human capital development in the industry, Md Silmi Abd Rahman, Matrade's Director of Transport, Logistics, Machinery, Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO)/Europe, Trade and Services Promotion Division, said. "When the second campus of University Kuala Lumpur's (UniKL) Malaysian Institute of Aviation Technology (MIAT) is completed, we expect about 4,000 high-skilled engineers can be produced annually," he told Bernama in an interview on the sidelines of the Singapore Airshow 2016 here. UniKL could train only 8,000 engineers out of 18,000 required in aerospace industry within the next five years, he added. The AAC, spanning over 3.5 million square feet in Subang, offers a complete business ecosystem for industry players in Southeast Asia, putting academic and business portions together to create a win-win situation for the industry. The development which starts this year would be in three phases, of which by end of the third phase, the AAC will house an office space, training centres, a convention centre, a business hotel and retail spaces as well as MIAT. The first phase of the aerospace hub is expected to begin construction in the first quarter of this year, of which its Subang Nexus is expected to be completed in early 2018. Md Silmi said opportunities were not only limited to aviation and military segments as there were many more segments that could be tapped into, especially in the commercial market segments of aerospace. "There are five main segments in aerospace which players can consider -- design and engineering, avionics and system integration, aero manufacturing, MRO and enabler or support services, which is also human capital," he said. Md Silmi said the AAC was also part of the Aerospace Belt recognised by the government to further develop the aviation and aerospace industry, which covered Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and the states of Negeri Sembilan and Melaka. -- BERNAMA