Pressing For Success

In 1986 Koon Poh Keong and his six brothers decided to start an aluminum company. Smart move. Today Malaysia’s Press Metal dominates the Southeast Asian market.

- Anis Shakirah

Koon Poh Keong knew what he had to do, but the risks were immense. He was betting his entire company on a bold plan to build a factory in China and invade the mainland aluminum market. But Chinese competitors were killing his Malaysian outfit, leaving him little choice. “We couldn’t compete with them,” he says.

So Koon spent $24 million to buy land and build a plant outside Foshan, Guangdong. It was 2005, and that sum equaled the entire value of his listed company, Press Metal. But the bet paid off. From $113 million in annual revenue back then, the company now generates $2 billion, with a net profit of $138 million last year. And the market capitalization tops $4.7 billion. That track record puts it on the Fab 50 list for the first time. “China is the best thing that ever happened to Press Metal,” says Koon. “China transformed us.”

Koon, 58, may be the face of Press Metal, as well as the chief executive, but the company has always been a family affair. In 1986 he was fresh out of college with a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Oklahoma and was returning home to Malaysia during a recession. Unable to find a job, he started Press Metal with his six brothers (he’s the youngest of seven). He knew hardly anything about aluminum, but he had worked at his family’s small hardware business, which traded aluminum bars. “We thought that since we’re trading these bars, why not make them?” he says. The brothers pooled $50,000 and began an aluminum-extruding company in a rickety rented factory, equipped with secondhand machines.