Fusionopolis Two to support future of manufacturing in Singapore: PM Lee

The Fusionopolis Two building located in one-north's research and development (R&D) hub will marshal and integrate all the capabilities needed to support the future of manufacturing here.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong made the point at the opening of the S$450 million Fusionopolis Two building that will bring together four more public research institutes - Data Storage Institute, Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology, Institute of Materials Research and Engineering and Institute of Microelectronics - to the area.

Already, manufacturing - a key pillar of the country's economy - is being transformed by digital technologies such as the internet-of-things, data fusion, greater automation and new methods of manufacturing such as additive manufacturing, said Mr Lee.

He added that housing the research institutes in one location, next to Fusionopolis One and Biopolis, will enable Singapore to build and integrate capabilities in areas such as materials science, chemistry, and computational modelling, to support multinational corporations and the smaller enterprises.

Mr Lee cited the example of the electronics sector, where Applied Materials will work with three of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research's (A*STAR's) research institutes in Fusionopolis One and Two.

Fusionopolis One, launched seven years ago, brought together the Institute for Infocomm Research as well as the Institute of High Performance Computing.

Their co-location has enhanced capabilities of both and found many more applications for their research, said Mr Lee, noting that this integration has catalysed many industry projects, as they collaborate with companies such as Singtel, DBS, Rolls Royce, Lloyd's and Fujitsu.

With Biopolis and Fusionopolis next to each other, startups will also be able to tap on the R&D for their own needs, Mr Lee said.

The number of startups here has more than doubled in the last decade, from 24,000 in 2005 to 55,000 last year.