A component of a steel tower leaves the facilities of KNM ready for shipping to one of the group's overseas customers.

‘‘The company has grown by leaps and bounds since we started in 1990, and we have market capitalization of over $1 billion,’’ says Managing Director Ir. Lee Swee Eng.

A winner of the Export Excellence Award in the merchandise category from the Malaysian government last year, KNM’s primary markets are the Middle East, China and the ASEAN region.

‘‘We are truly an export company with over 90 percent of our revenue coming from exports,’’ says Lee.

Since its inception, the company has expanded its business operations covering 11 plants in six countries. Still growing, KNM has plans for further expansion this year in Canada and Brazil. In addition, the group has recently announced the construction of another plant in Saudi Arabia by next year.

‘‘Our strategy is to continue staying reliable to our existing customers while reaching out to new markets and customers before the competition. Having our facilities at the project sites allows us to give our customers more hands-on service and dayto-day contact,’’ Lee adds.

Meanwhile, Japan accounts for nearly 20 percent of KNM’s sales volume.

‘‘Our Japanese customers are very important to our business. The projects of our Japanese customers like JGC Corp., Chiyoda Corp., Toyo Engineering Corp., Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Sumitomo are mostly based in the Middle East and China,’’ says Lee.

KNM’s main goals are to become one of the top 10 process equipment manufacturers in the world by 2008 and to achieve a 3 percent global market share by 2010.

‘‘We are aggressively growing and moving up the value chain as fast as we can. With the help of our subsidiaries in Italy and Australia, we are able to move up the value chain more easily and sell more sophisticated products to our customers,’’ he says.

www.knm-group.com