Lee Biscuits Shuts Malaysia Factory Cutting 300 Jobs

Lee Biscuits, a 92-year-old brand founded by Singapore’s late tycoon Lee Kong Chian, is ending production and shutting its factory in Johor by end-October, leaving around 300 workers without jobs.

Suppliers and customers received notification of the halt last month. A senior manager told China Press that warehouse sales held over the last two weeks have sold out all remaining biscuit stocks.

Customers attempting to buy products directly from the factory are now being redirected to retail outlets instead. The company has announced no future production plans for the biscuit brand, which is also known as Nam Lee.

Depleted Stock and Empty Sundry Tins

The manufacturing shutdown removes an established pantry staple from Malaysia’s independent grocers and sundry stores. The brand built its business on bulk tin formats and plastic packs containing soda crackers, Marie biscuits, banana tarts, iced gems, lemon sandwich biscuits, animal crackers, and spirulina whole wheat biscuits.

Those products filled store displays across both West Malaysia and Singapore for decades, serving as low-cost volume drivers for neighborhood provision shops. With internal warehouse inventory cleared out entirely, distributors face an immediate supply cut once existing shop-floor stock runs dry over the coming weeks.

Exit from Fast-Moving Consumer Goods

The shutdown forms part of a broader corporate restructuring by the parent holding group to abandon consumer-facing packaged goods entirely. Capital is shifting back into upstream primary commodities, concentrating operations around rubber processing and palm oil plantations.

For retailers and shelf planners, the departure opens up shelf space in the value cracker category. Operators relying on traditional sundry distribution face losing a heritage brand that required zero promotional spending to drive volume.

The Manufacturing Move Across the Causeway

Tycoon Lee Kong Chian established the biscuit brand in Singapore in 1934 before relocating operations across the border. Lee built the Lee Rubber Company into a regional empire before co-founding OCBC Bank through a three-way merger in 1932.

Manufacturing ran inside Singapore for over two decades until management shifted the lines to Johor Bahru in 1955 to tap cheaper agricultural raw materials and processing facilities. Operations relocated again within Johor to the current factory site in 2005, where lines ran continuously until this month’s wind-down.

Sequential Plant Closures in Johor

The factory shuttering follows an identical retreat from the packaged food sector. The group permanently closed its Lee Pineapple canning facility in Skudai, Johor, in 2023, ending decades of fruit processing to focus resources on upstream estate acreage.

Retail buyers must now run down their final cases of biscuits before factory gates close permanently by end-October.