International market
2026-10-22Lead: 2026 年 10 月 12 日, Malaysia engineering service provider Kelington Group Berhad's wholly-owned subsidiary Kelington Technologies has been awarded an additional contract by a customer to provide design and construction of an Ultra-High Purity Deionized Water (DI Water) Generation System and Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) for the expansion project of an advanced data storage manufacturing facility in the Sama Jaya Free Industrial Zone, Kuching, Sarawak, with a contract value of approximately RM1.28 亿 (approximately RM1.28 亿). The customer's cumulative contract value has increased from RM4.16 亿 to RM5.44 亿, an increase of approximately 30.8%, with the project expected to be completed by 2028 年 4 月.
Three Announcements in One Month: The Orders Are "Additions"
The highlight of this deal is not just the amount, but the rhythm. Kelington had previously announced related contracts from the same customer on 9 月 29 日 and 10 月 5 日 respectively, and 10 月 12 日 marks the third. The three announcements were spaced less than two weeks apart, with cumulative contracts jumping from RM4.16 亿 to RM5.44 亿.
This "phased addition" model is a typical procurement approach for capacity expansion by large manufacturing customers: the general contracting framework is set first, and individual process packages are released segment by segment as the project progresses. For suppliers, this means that once they enter the customer's qualified supplier list, subsequent orders carry high certainty; for new entrants, it means the entry window mainly appears at the early project initiation stage, and mid-course entry is highly difficult.
The group stated in its Bursa Malaysia filing that it expects to continue securing other engineering contracts for the same expansion project from the same customer, and will announce any material progress in due course. CEO Lim Seng Chuan noted that Malaysia's 2027 年 Budget continued support for the semiconductor industry is encouraging and is expected to drive more high-value manufacturing investment, providing opportunities for Kelington to leverage its engineering expertise in future projects.
One Package Containing "Ultrapure Water" and "Wastewater Treatment"
The scope of this contract is the design and construction of an Ultra-High Purity Deionized Water Generation System + Wastewater Treatment Plant System. The fact that these two are bundled and awarded to the same supplier is itself a piece of industry information worth reading.
- Ultrapure Water (UPW) — a core medium for cleaning and chemical preparation in semiconductor and data storage device manufacturing, with extremely stringent requirements on ions, particles, TOC, Dissolved Oxygen and other parameters. The system typically consists of pretreatment + Reverse Osmosis + EDI + polishing mixed bed + Ultrafiltration terminal, etc., and is a typical high-tech-threshold process package;
- Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) — wastewater discharged from such manufacturing facilities contains characteristic pollutants such as acids and alkalis, heavy metals, fluoride and high-concentration silicon, requiring segregated collection and differentiated treatment, and often equipped with reuse units due to increasingly stringent local discharge limits.
Placing both in the hands of the same supplier essentially means the customer is pursuing "integrated water balance": the ultrapure water preparation on the intake side and the wastewater treatment and reuse on the discharge side form a coupled system in terms of water quantity and quality. The higher the reuse rate, the lower the water intake and the raw water load on the ultrapure water system. For the engineering party, being able to undertake both sides means delivering an overall water consumption and water cost optimization solution to the customer, rather than just two pieces of equipment.
Who Is Driving Industrial Water in Southeast Asia: Data Centers and Semiconductors
Kelington's customer is described as an "advanced data storage manufacturing facility" located in the Sama Jaya Free Industrial Zone, Kuching. This positioning is key — data storage device manufacturing belongs to the semiconductor industry chain while also directly serving the data center construction boom of recent years.
Data centers have a dual demand for water: first, cooling water — evaporative cooling and circulating cooling systems consume large amounts of water, and Reclaimed Water and Reclaimed Water Reuse have extremely high substitution value; second, ultrapure water on the manufacturing side — which is the content of this contract. The former determines the configuration of park-level reclaimed water facilities, while the latter determines the technical level of the in-plant water treatment system.
Malaysia is becoming a key host country for this round of capacity relocation. The government continues to strengthen support for the semiconductor industry through budget bills, free industrial zones offer tax and land-use incentives, and investment in supporting infrastructure such as water, electricity, and gas is accelerating accordingly. Kelington's core business covers ultra-high-purity gas and chemical systems, general contracting, and environmental engineering, and its customer base is precisely the high-tech manufacturing sector—the structure of the orders it wins is, to some extent, a water sector cross-section of Malaysia's industrial upgrading.
Three Takeaways for Chinese Water Treatment Enterprises
The industrial water market in Southeast Asia is rapidly scaling up, but the market entry approach needs to be redesigned:
- Selling equipment is inferior to selling process packages—this contract is "design and build" rather than mere supply. The customer's procurement logic is to hand over the entire system and only accept the produced water quality and reuse rate, which means process design capability, automation capability, and commissioning and delivery capability matter more than unit price;
- Bind to customers rather than to projects—three additional contract awards show that once you enter a customer's system, orders will continue to be released. A more realistic entry path for Chinese enterprises is to follow domestic manufacturing customers going overseas (their overseas factories often give priority to familiar equipment and service providers for water infrastructure), or to bid in consortiums with local engineering contractors;
- Focus on the combined opportunity of "ultrapure water + wastewater reuse"—this is a demand structure unique to the electronics and data storage industries. China already has mature engineering experience in electronic-grade ultrapure water and wastewater reuse, with a small technology gap and obvious cost advantages, making it the most comparatively advantageous export direction.
The Next Growth Point for Reclaimed Water in Southeast Asia
Taking a broader view, industrial water demand in Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and elsewhere is shifting from "compliance discharge" to "resource circulation." There are three driving factors: first, water scarcity pressure—water intake in some industrial parks is restricted during the dry season; second, supply chain carbon and water footprint audits by international brand customers—export-oriented manufacturers are required to disclose and reduce water consumption per unit of product; third, the economies of scale from centralized water treatment facilities in industrial parks.
Driven by these three factors, the combination of park-level reclaimed water plants + quality-segregated water supply + quality-segregated drainage is becoming standard configuration for newly built industrial parks. For enterprises with reclaimed water reuse engineering experience, the opportunity in the Southeast Asian market is not just individual projects, but the export of complete park-level water solutions.
Conclusion
The additional contract of RM1.28 亿, cumulative orders of RM5.44 亿, and three announcements in one month—these three figures outline the most real current state of the Southeast Asian industrial water market: demand is directly driven by high-tech manufacturing capacity expansion, orders are released in batches in the form of process packages, and delivery cycles last more than two years. For Chinese water treatment enterprises, the threshold to this market lies not in technology, but in whether they can package technology into delivery capability that customers are willing to purchase as a whole package.
About TIANYI TECH: TIANYI TECH (TIANYI LIMITED) focuses on the fields of wastewater treatment, reclaimed water reuse, and water environment governance, providing municipal and industrial customers with full-chain services including process design, equipment integration, engineering general contracting, and smart operations. The company has engineering capabilities in ultrapure water preparation for electronics and high-water-consumption industries, classified wastewater treatment and reuse, and park-level reclaimed water system planning, and can provide customers with integrated solutions from water balance diagnosis to long-term operation and maintenance. For more information, please visit the company website at www.tianyitech.hk.
Source: The Star "Kelington unit secures additional RM128mil contract for Kuching project" (2026 年 10 月 13 日), KLSE Screener "Kelington bags RM128mil top-up contract" (2026 年 10 月 13 日), compiled based on filings submitted by Kelington Group Berhad to Bursa Malaysia.
