Penang, Malaysia
In 1991 the engineering company CC Systems, in the small village of Alfta outside of Bollnäs, had seven employees and a turnover of 4 million SEK.
Since then the staff has steadily grown to 200 hundred people, and recently the doors opened to the company’s new production facilities in Malaysia.

“The production expansion is a complement to our production in Sweden, it will secure the future for both the company and our employees”, CEO Jan Carlsson assures.
The Swedish newspaper Dagens Industri meets him during a visit at the new facilitates on the island of Penang, located an hour air travel from the capital city Kuala Lumpur.
CC Systems manufacture hardware for control systems such as computers and control panels used in for example timber cutting machines, mining and container handling equipment. They have multinational customers like John Deere, Atlas Copco, Bombardier and Volvo.

Opens up for a new type of business
“The fact that we now also have low-cost production resources, will get us an even stronger market position, which consequently results in new customers”, Jan Carlsson believes.
He is also convinced that the establishment in Malaysia will enable the possibilities for new type of business for CC Systems.
“Earlier we have had problems to take on labour-intensive orders that implicated larger volumes. That is not a problem any more”, he says.

China a new exporting country
CC Systems customers have earlier been located on the northern European market. But China is a recently upcoming market for the company.
“China has gone from being an absent market to becoming a market with great potential, all in one year.”
According to Jan Carlsson, the company’s establishment in Malaysia, whose human population consists of Malayans, Chinese and Indians, is a strong factor in the context.
“Partly it has to do with the fact that we now have production and employees in the same time zone, and that the staff can give service in both Chinese and English. Which is a benefit that we haven’t though of earlier.

Need of engineers
The company has a total of 200 employees, 110 employees work at the head office in Alfta, Hälsingland. So far the company only has 20 employees in Malaysia, but they have space for about 60, and Jan Carlsson is confident that the staff will grow further in both Sweden and Malaysia during 2008.
“We are a technology intensive company, about half of the staff is development engineers, in this area we will see a continuing growth in recruitments in both Finland and Sweden. In Malaysia we focus on production with a less qualified workforce.”
Since the starting year 1991 CC Systems have had a good growth until last year, when big investments reduced the profit. The annual account for 2007 is not finalised yet, but Jan Carlsson estimates a turnover of 200 million SEK, still positive numbers.
“During the year we have started the production in Malaysia, we have also expanded our operation, partly through hiring personnel in Sweden and Finland. We also did an acquisition at the beginning of the year when we bought a small engineering company in Tampere, Finland.

Counting on 20% growth
During 2008 Jan Carlsson is counting on a 20 % growth and an improved result.
“This year we are counting on a 10 % profit margin. Several of our existing customers has good volume trend, and we have also noticed an increasing interest from new clients”, he says.

The article was written by Jenny Hedelin, and published the 18th of January 2008 in Dagens Industri. CC Systems have translated the article to English.