By S BIRRUNTHA

INTEGRATED engineering solutions provider, Kelington Group Bhd has secured several new contracts amounting to RM118 million in the fourth quarter of 2020 (4Q20).

Following that, the group’s orderbook has risen to a record of RM490 million which exceeded last year’s record of RM386 million.

In a statement yesterday, the group noted that the strong orders were due to the recovery in the semiconductor industry.

Kelington said the majority of the new orders secured were from the ultra-high purity (UHP) segment, which accounted for about 60% of the total, from China, Malaysia and Singapore.

More than one-third of new orders secured was awarded by the largest semi-conductor foundry company in China.

Its CEO Raymond Gan said the group remained resilient during the unprecedented year supported by a strong pipeline of project orders.

“The recovery of the semiconductor industry has been encouraging, and we are seeing a resumption of project orders from Malaysia and Singapore for our UHP and process engineering division.

“Despite the fluid economic landscape, our project flow from China was doing relatively well, and contributed approximately 35% of total new orders secured in 4Q20, as our major semiconductor client continues to expand its operations,” he said.

He added that Kelington is positive the upward momentum will continue in 2021 as semiconductor and electrical and electronic industry players are gradually ramping up their operations to get back on track for expansion.

Meanwhile, Gan said its industrial gases operations have normalised with production volume resumed to the previous level.

However, the group is cautiously optimistic about the pace of sales orders following the implementation of the second Movement Control Order (MCO).

“We do not foresee a similar decline in demand for our liquid carbon dioxide such as the first MCO as most of our major end-users such as industry players from construction, manufacturing, etc, are per- mitted to operate this time around,” he added.

At close yesterday, Kelington’s share price ended 2.49% or five sen higher at RM2.06, valuing the company at RM664.6 million.