Southeast Asia is an established region of pharmaceutical and hi-tech manufacturing and innovation. The varying countries have specialisms, with strengths and weaknesses unique to each, but overall, the area is booming.
Singapore is well known for hi-tech innovation, creating a southeast asian hub for R&D, and high-spec fabrication. The country invests heavily in smart infrastructure, ultra-pure utilities, and environmental controls, whilst also attracting high-value talent and IP. On the manufacturing side, you have Vietnam, which has very cheap labour and manufacturing costs, as well as proximity to many other countries in Asia. For the cleanroom sector, this means volume assembly, chip testing and chip packaging. In the middle is Malaysia, which is more of a balance of these two models, with an up-and-coming presence in outsourcing semiconductor assembly and testing.
Impact of change in the US: The CHIPS Act, tariffs and more
The demand for cleanrooms in Southeast Asia has been steadily growing for years, with semiconductor and manufacturing at the heart of this. A confounding factor of this growth is the introduction of the CHIPS Act in the US. This act allocated more than $50bn to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing, with the majority going towards building the fabrication facilities.
Enacted in 2023, the CHIPS Act is still in its infancy, and it
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