Anwar: Infineon needs 3,000 skilled workers in Kedah - NST Online

Infineon's 3,000-skilled-worker gap in Kedah is not a hiring notice—it is a structural signal that advanced packaging capacity is hitting a talent ceiling. The Kedah site has pivoted from legacy wire bonding to SiP and 2.5D assembly, meaning the workforce required is engineering-grade: lithography alignment, thermal management, reliability validation—not line operators. On the supply chain, this bottleneck directly stalls the deployment cadence of ASMPT and Besi bonding equipment. Machines arrive; no one operates them; capacity idles. Downstream, Bosch and Continental face stretched lead times on Infineon power modules, pushing delivery pressure onto TI and MPS for automotive MCU and SiC modules through 2026. Competitively, ASE's Penang and Kulim expansions alongside Amkor's Manik line are all drawing from the same finite Malaysian semiconductor talent pool. Wage inflation compounded by a 6-to-18-month training cycle will be the hardest constraint before 2026. 12-to-24-month outlook: Infineon will almost certainly anchor a local polytechnic pipeline and backfill with expatriate engineers short-term, adding 8 to 12 percent to per-unit packaging cost. The deeper read: Malaysia is transitioning from a low-cost assembly base to a skill-intensive packaging hub. Whether that transition completes on schedule will determine how much advanced packaging capacity overflows from mainland China and Taiwan, China into the region.