This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on November 21, 2017

KUALA LUMPUR: Supermax Corp Bhd, the world’s fourth biggest glove maker by production capacity, is in talks to acquire a Japanese contact lens maker — a move to become the dominant player there.

“We are talking to a few contact lens players in Japan so that we can move into the market quickly. We want to be a dominant player in the Japanese contact lens market through acquisitions,” its group managing director Datuk Seri Stanley Thai Kim Sim told reporters, after the group’s annual general meeting yesterday.

Last year, Supermax bought Japanese medical equipment manufacturer AIME KK, which also produces contact lenses and glasses, for ¥30 million or about RM1.16 million.

Last Thursday, the group incorporated a 70%-owned subsidiary in Japan — AIME Supermax KK — in which International Consulting of Business Management Corp holds the remaining 30%.

“The company that we have bought, its business model is to sell the contact lens to eye doctors,” said Thai. To widen its market coverage, he said, Supermax is in talks with companies that have licences to sell to other segments of the Japanese market, for instance optical shops and online platforms.

“We have to cover various industries and obviously grow online as e-commerce [penetration] is very high there (Japan),” said Thai.

Supermax expects to secure a licence to sell contact lenses in Japan by the fourth quarter of next year should the acquisition talks bear fruit. Currently, Supermax exports to about 30 countries.

“We are waiting for more licences to be issued from the respective health ministries, which will allow us to sell our contact lens in regulated countries,” Thai added.

Thai said the contact lens business is expected to start contributing positively to the group’s profit in the second half of 2019.

For the financial year ended June 30, 2017, Supermax reported a net profit of RM70.21 million, while revenue clocked in at RM1.13 billion.

There were no comparative figures for FY17 due to the group’s change of financial year end from Dec 31 to June 30 in the previous financial period.

Currently, the Sungai Buloh manufacturing plant produces about 70 million lenses a year and the group aims to tap into the top global contact lens player with a minimum lens production capacity of one billion lenses in 10 years.