Multicore Solders (Malaysia), SDN, BHD, Ipoh, Malaysia

Abstract

This profile is somewhat more exotic than the usual ones found in this, hopefully, august journal and your reporter would like to dwell on the background more than is usual. If you take your world atlas, you may find Ipoh as an isolated dot in the middle of the Malaysian peninsula, a little to the north‐west of Kuala Lumpur. Viewed thus, why would Multicore Solders choose such an isolated outpost to establish a subsidiary factory? Arriving at the international airport at Kuala Lumpur starts to give one a clue: there are enormous bare scars in the plain. Flying from Kuala Lumpur to Ipoh, these scars multiply. They are the remains of the open‐cast tin mines in the alluvial deposits. Viewed from the air, they are a terrible blot on the landscape. The amazing thing is that they juxtapose oil palm, fruit and rubber plantations and even untouched jungle, but they remain bare and desert for decades. It is evident that no effort has been made to conserve the vegetable soil and replace it after the mining operations are finished, but this may be because the humus layer is so thin that it would be impossible to do so. To the ignorant European that this writer is, I imagined that the jungle was an all‐invading vegetation ready to swallow‐up every square metre of land: not so, it is a very precarious ecosystem where the humus formed by the rotting vegetation is swallowed up by the new growth faster than it can form. The jungle soil is very thin, bare rock being common and such a humus layer may take decades or even centuries to form. Most of the disused tin‐mines are therefore as devoid of life as the starkest desert. It would seem that, after fifty years or so, the first signs of vegetation start to reappear, a very meagre growth which, in time, may develop into scrub or secondary jungle without high trees.

Citation

Ellis, B.N. (1989), "Multicore Solders (Malaysia), SDN, BHD, Ipoh, Malaysia", Soldering & Surface Mount Technology, Vol. 1 No. 3, pp. 67-68. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb037695