BARELY three months into his job, the new chief executive (CEO) of airport industry-linked Inter-Roller Engineering, Mr Lim Yee Min, has already set a lofty goal for his company.

He aims to make annual revenue soar by five times to $350 million in five years.

The company, which specialises in airport and industrial logistics systems, is well-placed to achieve this, he reckons.

Inter-Roller can benefit from Asia's booming air-travel industry, which is taking off so well that cities across the region have been spending huge amounts to build new airports and upgrade existing ones.

Giving an insight into the size of contracts which Inter-Roller is eyeing, Mr Lim told The Straits Times: 'In the 1980s, the average size of each contract was only $1 million to $2 million.

'Now, we are talking about $50 million to $60 million for each baggage-handling system contract.'

Contracts valued at $10 million or less now hardly arouse the same kind of excitement they once did when Mr Lim, 54, first joined the company in 1981.

Inter-Roller currently has an order book of $60 million and is bidding for contracts worth more than $200 million in total.

These include tenders for baggage-handling systems in the Middle East and China - the two fastest-growing markets in the region.

Over the past two years, Inter-Roller's share price has risen by about 3.9 times, from lows of about 20 cents during the Sars crisis.

Last Thursday, the counter closed one cent higher at $1 on a modest volume of 174,000 shares.

Mr Lim took over as CEO on Jan 1 from Mr Yap Lem who founded Inter-Roller in 1979.

Despite stepping down from the helm, Mr Yap has stayed on as an executive director to help map the company's business strategies.

Full-year net profit rose 56 per cent to $10.3 million last year, while group revenue soared 32 per cent to $69.9 million - boosted mostly by logistics systems work done for new airports and the expansion and upgrading of existing airports.

One factor contributing to Inter-Roller's growth is the rapid expansion of airport facilities as increasingly more travellers take to the skies.

Mr Lim noted that the new Dubai airport's baggage-handling system will cost as much as 250 million euros (S$536.3 million). South Korea's Incheon International Airport is in the same league, with its new baggage-handling system costing US$250 million (S$413 million).

And although the airports have expanded their capacity rapidly, they are still bursting at the seams, he noted.

Although Shanghai has a new airport terminal which enables it to cater for 25 million passengers a year, it is already drawing up plans to enable it to cope with 60 million passengers a year, said Mr Lim.

The same story goes for Guangzhou airport: Although its new terminal was opened only last year, it already has plans for another new terminal because its passenger capacity has almost reached saturation point.

Mr Lim also had this to say about the rapid growth of budget carriers: 'While this may not strain existing baggage-handling systems - as such passengers have less luggage - it is forcing airports to upgrade their facilities in anticipation of the travellers turning into full-fare passengers.'

To cope with the boom in business, Inter-Roller has expanded its factory in Pontian, Johor, at a cost of $5 million.

The relatively low cost of the expansion is due to the emphasis which the company places on knowledge and design among its staff, said Mr Lim.

Value-added per employee rose to $71,525 last year from $65,941 in 2003.

《The Straits Times》