A lot has changed since Sandvik Mining announced plans to develop a new load and haul production facility in Malaysia back in March 2023, but after visiting the more than 8,000 sq.m Seremban hub this month, it became clear how strategic the SEK350 million ($37 million) could be.
The new facility is situated in the Sendayan TechValley industrial park, approximately 70 km south of Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, 15 km west of state capital Seremban and 90 km southeast of Malaysia’s largest seaport and one of the busiest container terminals in the world, Port Klang.
Built to be independent of existing supplier chains, the factory employs a “cross-manufacturing plan” that will enable the facility to build six equipment models – the Toro® LH517i, Toro TH545, Toro LH410, Toro TH663i, Toro TH330 and one currently unnamed model – from 15 versatile assembly bays.
The company will eventually be able to take delivery of battery cells and assemble whole battery packs from them for the likes of the LH518iB and TH550B battery-electric vehicles, taking pressure off Sandvik Mining’s main battery production hub in Camarillo, California.
VO Kataja, MD at Seremban, says the factory takes its lead from the Turku facility, in Finland, in terms of product design, employing the cross-manufacturing plan here to facilitate the quick build of the machines.
Petri Liljaranta, Director of Supply, Load & Haul at Sandvik Mining, explained that the company has a few facilities with the required volume and distribution using such a plan to facilitate shorter delivery times to customers.
Seremban, in its current form, complements the company’s other facilities – the main Turku production and R&D hub, a diesel machine assembly site for regional sales in Johannesburg and a diesel assembly plant in Changzhou.
The site, which took just six months and six days to revamp from the previous shell, has around 90 people spread across the seven active assembly bays, battery system assembly line, a separate sub-assembly area, the testing facility and various offices.
Pivoting
It’s fair to say the facility has not yet helped Sandvik Mining answer growing demand for its battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) as was originally envisaged back in March 2023.
This isn’t down to the factory not being ready for this – up until around a year ago plans included the assembly of LH518iBs by the end of this September quarter – but a reflection of the demand for BEVs from Asia Pacific having not yet materialised. The facility is helping electrify mining equipment, having assembled 10 battery modules alone in March, yet this assembly rate is far from what the company originally planned.
Still, Sandvik Mining has plans for the “semi-automated” battery line to soon add the battery pack to this mix for completion of the entire assembly.
Safri Sabtu, the facility’s Production Manager, said it can take less than an hour to go from a battery cell to a battery module with this line.
“The curing time is the current bottleneck; we’re able to charge up to 16 modules at a time in our charging booth,” he said.
Liljaranta says this battery manufacturing capability could allow the company to serve customers in APAC with fast spare parts as well as complete battery deliveries – a key differentiator in one of the most competitive regions for underground load and haul equipment across the globe.
As well as Asia Pacific BEV demand not yet materialising, global politics have also influenced the Seremban plan, with logistics bottlenecks and sanctions seemingly having an impact. This was evident from the lists of countries the facility has delivered to so far.
Most deliveries have gone to APAC – the first LH517i out of the factory went to Australia, for instance, in May 2024 – but Kataja reeled off deliveries to Canada, Mexico, Chile, Zambia and the US, among others, within the 24 units the company had dispatched from Seremban in the 18 months to the end of June 2025.
There is a distinct advantage from a logistics and proximity perspective to shipping units from Malaysia to Australia, instead of Finland to Australia, with Liljaranta measuring this in weeks. He said deliveries to some other selected markets were always part of the plan, even though the product mix for Seremban is focused on APAC sales.
Kataja also referenced the product mix and customer specification when asked about machines heading to customers outside of the APAC region.
“All these deliveries are assigned by the division headquarters,” he said. “It doesn’t matter to our facility where the machine is going as long as we ensure we are equipping it with the right specifications the customer requires.”
Ramping up
It is fair to say that Seremban is only just getting started. Kataja says there are plans to expand the workforce significantly over the coming years, with several hundred employees and contractors expected to be on site by the early 2030s. By then, the facility is anticipated to be operating close to full capacity, producing hundreds of loaders, trucks and battery packs annually.
In the near term, production volumes are set to steadily increase, with another ramp-up expected around 2027 as the facility moves from operating on a one-shift basis to two shifts.
Sooner than that, the company has its eye on adding AutoMine® testing to the facility’s customer options – it currently relies on the sales area to conduct this. This will complement the 120 m test track (with ramp) already in place for equipment testing prior to machine dispatch.
This testing process is rigorous, with the Seremban facility hosting trainers from Turku and Changzhou for pretty much the entirety of the time it has been open as part of an interim QA/QC process.
The process the company follows to assemble these machines is also being finetuned, with the implementation of SAP Ariba platform adding an extra layer of visibility at both a site and division level.
A “MBOM knowledge transfer” program that Sandvik Mining says allows for timely sourcing and incorporation of components, frames, buckets and the like to ensure the assembly process moves as quickly as possible is also in action.
Localising the supply chain
As with the addition of any new mining OEM facility today, the importance of a local supply chain is vital.
There is no manufacturer like Sandvik in the Sendayan TechValley industrial park, and the potential suppliers near to the facility are not used to dealing with the order cycles of mining OEMs.
Kataja explained: “This part of Malaysia knows the oil & gas business well and can supply parts and components as part of one-off projects, but it is a little alien to them when a company like us says they will need 40 frames per year. We’re not a mass production company; we’re a serial production company.”
This reality has seen a lot of the machine assembly inputs – mainly the most expensive parts such as engines – come from further away than the company would like. Sabtu says “local” from a Seremban perspective is currently anything sourced from outside of Europe.
But this is likely to change in the next few years, at the same time as the Sandvik sustainability drive takes hold – soon to be evidenced in Seremban with the installation of solar panels and an electricity storage unit.
Boel Schylander, VP Sustainability at Sandvik Mining, said the company is continuously working to reduce the environmental footprint of its operations, including the embedded emissions associated with manufacturing. “Our Malaysia facility, like our other major production sites, is part of this journey,” she added.
Kataja is also convinced the embedded emissions of products coming out of Seremban will continue to fall as the sourcing team’s efforts are rewarded.
“Outside of assembly operators, the sourcing department is the biggest department here,” Kataja said. “We are continuing to meet and engage with potential suppliers face-to-face – a necessity in this part of the world – to explain what we are doing here and how they can be a part of our production plans.
“The idea is to find suppliers that can match our needs, allowing both us as a manufacturer and them as suppliers to achieve sustainable growth.”
