Proton has broken ground on a new facility at its Tanjong Malim production site which will be home to two new stamping lines. The upcoming stamping E- and F-Line are part of the carmaker’s plans to increase its parts stamping volume as it prepares to relocate production of the Saga from Shah Alam to Tanjong Malim by 2026.
According to Proton, RM253 million is being invested into the project, which will also cater to any new models that it introduces in the near future. This is the second such planned expansion after the inauguration of the D-Line stamping plant in March last year.
The new E-Line will feature a four-stage stamping process with a 1,600-tonne stamping machine and three 800-tonne machines, while the F-Line will have a five-stage stamping process utilising a 2000-tonne, 1200-tonne and three 1000-tonne stamping force machines. Robots will be used to transfer parts between workstations, with IR 4.0 technology providing real-time data and machine learning to improve the quality of parts produced.
The new stamping lines will also help further reduce Proton’s reliance on imported parts for its models, improving local parts supply as well as insulating the company against potential disruptions to global trade.
“The addition of the parts stamping E- and F-Line are critical to Proton’s future volume expansion plans as it gives us more flexibility to ramp up our production and meet market demand. For the whole of 2023 and up to June 2024, our Tanjong Malim plant has stamped out 6,067,064 components, of which 395,211 are from the new D-Line, and this number will grow exponentially when production for the Proton Saga is relocated here in 2026,” said Li Chunrong, CEO of Proton.
“As Proton moves towards consolidating our production operations in Tanjong Malim, we continue to work towards increasing our local parts sourcing. Aside from cost and parts security considerations, we continue to champion the government’s aim to grow local participation in the automotive industry via job creation on multiple levels,” he added.
Consolidating production to a single site has been on the cards ever since the agreement between DRB-Hicom and Zhejiang Geely was signed in 2017, which saw the Chinese company acquire a 49.9% equity stake in Proton. At the time, it was revealed during a Q&A session that Proton will fully relocate its Shah Alam operations to Tanjung Malim within the next five years. However, it is likely that the worldwide pandemic that struck in 2020 forced Proton (and many other carmakers) to readjust their plans.
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