Jabil further Expands in Malaysia Roots as It Climbs the Manufacturing Value Chain

Thirty years after American manufacturing giant Jabil Inc opened its first Asian factory in Penang to build disk drive product assemblies, the group now operates six facilities across Malaysia, engineering products, optimising global supply chains and deploying AI across manufacturing operations for its customers.

"Malaysia is one of our most strategically significant operations in Asia. Our Bayan Lepas operations alone span more than one million sq ft, running 24/7 across multiple plants. Add five more [local] locations and you have an operation of real depth," Jabil Malaysia managing director Tan Siew Jin told The Edge in an interview in Batu Kawan.

Tan started as a test engineer at Jabil Penang in 1995, the year the plant opened as Jabil’s first Asian facility and only its second site outside the US.

Six sites, 14,000 people

Jabil is headquartered in St Petersburg, Florida, listed on the NYSE, and operates more than 100 sites across over 25 countries with about 140,000 employees globally. Malaysia houses roughly one-tenth of that workforce — 14,000 employees across six sites: Batu Kawan (its largest), two sites in Bayan Lepas, one each in Kulim and Sungai Petani, and Chuping in Perlis, its newest site, launched in 2025.

Jabil expanded into Batu Kawan in 2015 after acquiring an 8ha plot from state investment arm Penang Development Corp (PDC) for RM30 million. Tan said the group continues to assess opportunities to strengthen its footprint in Malaysia, supporting evolving customer requirements over the long term.

The long-term workforce target is around 80% local talent, with hiring shifting toward technical, engineering and digital roles as automation absorbs repetitive work. "Jabil Penang has a very strong R&D team and that is one of the reasons we continue to invest in Malaysia," Tan said.

From PCBA assembly to full manufacturing solutions

Jabil started in 1966 building circuit boards on its founders’ kitchen table outside Detroit for its first customer, Control Data Corp. Its early Malaysia business was predominantly printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) — components like capacitors, ICs and diodes soldered onto boards, since automated.

The group has since moved upstream into engineering, development, integrated solutions and co-development with customers. "We now ask how we can design and build it better together. We are also deeply involved in supply chain and logistics, helping customers ship products globally and, in some cases, acting as their regional hub," Tan said.

Jabil is now the world’s third-largest manufacturing services company and the largest in healthcare manufacturing, serving more than 400 product brands globally across healthcare, capital equipment, automotive, aerospace, defence and medical. Its Malaysian operations handle compliance-heavy, precision-critical programmes for clients Tan would not name, though The Edge understands they include AI networking infrastructure providers, cloud computing firms, social media companies and wafer fabrication equipment makers.

In the semiconductor value chain, Jabil sits in the assembly and integration stage between front-end wafer fabrication and back-end packaging and testing, while moving further upstream into advanced packaging-related capabilities. AI-driven data centre infrastructure, healthcare, semiconductor and capital equipment are generating the strongest demand right now, Tan said.

Jabil uses an internal system called vCommand to support site-allocation decisions, weighing geopolitics, freight cost, transport mode, time-to-market and customer requirements. "With one-third of our facilities each in Asia, Europe and the Americas, we can move production when conditions shift," Tan said, noting Jabil manages more than 38,000 suppliers and over US$25 billion (RM102 billion) in annual procurement.

Jabil’s stock is up about 60% in the first half of the year, giving it a market value of nearly US$40 billion — larger than every company listed on Bursa Malaysia.

What it means for Malaysia’s industrial property market

• A 30-year tenant is still expanding. Jabil’s footprint growth — Batu Kawan in 2015, Chuping in 2025, and continued assessment of new sites — shows established multinationals still see Malaysia as a long-term base, not just a low-cost stopover.

• Demand is spreading beyond Penang island. Jabil’s newest and largest sites sit in Batu Kawan and Chuping, not Bayan Lepas — the same pattern seen in K-Test’s new Perak plant and THMY’s Batu Kawan expansion. Mainland Penang, Kedah and Perlis are absorbing the growth that Penang island no longer has the land to host.

• Upstream tenants want more building, not less. As Jabil moves from simple assembly into engineering, R&D and advanced packaging, its space requirements shift toward higher-spec, higher-value facilities — reinforcing the trend toward purpose-built factories with heavier M&E specifications.