Malaysia's Last Match Factory Keeps Going as Sales Fall and Its Workforce Shrinks

Thirty workers keep a once bustling factory alive

Kelantan Match Factory once employed about 1,000 people across three shifts. By December 8, 2025, the plant near Kota Bharu was operating with roughly 25 to 30 workers, while its manager estimated that sales had fallen by 50 to 70 percent compared with thirty years earlier. Yet when orders require it, its production lines can still turn out about 96,000 boxes a day.

Established in 1933 in Sungai Keladi, the factory is widely regarded as Malaysia's last operating match manufacturer. Its survival rests on a small but continuing market: rural households, cooks, hotels and customers who still prefer a match for everyday tasks.

The manager, aged 76 and known to colleagues as Matchstick Wee, has spent more than thirty years at the plant. He remembers a yard crowded with workers at all hours. Describing the change from its busiest years, he said:

We used to have three shifts of workers, now look at us, only 30 workers left.

Disposable lighters have displaced much of the everyday demand for matches. Local timber shortages and tighter rules on logging and processing have also changed how the factory buys its materials, forcing it to import most raw materials from China.

The low complex on the fringes of Kota Bharu remains a working factory, with conveyors carrying sticks and boxes through a routine that has barely changed in decades. The clatter of machinery and the faint scent of sulfur belong to an operation that has grown smaller without disappearing.

Visitors now provide another kind of activity. Buses and cars arrive without appointments, bringing people who want to look inside, take photographs and buy a few boxes to carry home. Their curiosity has given this surviving piece of Malaysian industry an audience beyond its regular customers.

A business that began with imported matches

The factory's origins are traced to a trader from Mumbai who saw an opportunity to manufacture matches locally. In 1933, when the business began in Sungai Keladi near Kota Bharu, Malaya imported most of its matchboxes from Sweden, Britain, Japan and China.

Ownership changed several times before businessman Tan Chon San took over in 1995. The plant survived war, independence and rapid urban growth, expanding or contracting as demand changed around it.

Malaysia once had several match factories. Perak Match Factory opened in 1936, and a small operation in Sarawak ran after the war. Both closed during the twentieth century, leaving Kelantan to continue making the small boxes that had once been common in Malaysian kitchens.

Several dates mark the factory's history and the wider industry:

• 1933: Kelantan Match Factory began operating in Sungai Keladi, near Kota Bharu.
• 1936: Perak Match Factory opened.
• After the war: A small match operation ran in Sarawak.
• 1995: Businessman Tan Chon San took over the Kelantan factory.
• 1998: The factory made souvenir matches for the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur.
• By December 8, 2025: Kelantan remained widely regarded as Malaysia's last operating match manufacturer, with roughly 25 to 30 workers.

Its continued presence is striking when measured against its own past. A workforce of 25 to 30 represents about 2.5 to 3 percent of the roughly 1,000 people employed at its peak. The factory still has three main production lines, but the workforce supporting them is a fraction of its former size.

Who still buys a box of matches?

Rural households remain an important market. Matches are used to light gas hobs, charcoal and kerosene stoves, and mosquito coils. Cooks in towns and villages also keep boxes near the hob, where a small flame is enough to start the next task.

A box costs little and needs no separate supply of fuel. Matches also retain a place on damp mornings when a cheap lighter may sputter. Those practical uses help explain why demand has continued even as disposable lighters have become the more common choice.

Hotels remain regular customers and place boxes in rooms. Branded packs can be used by guests to light candles or incense. The factory's boxes also continue to reach stores nationwide, giving its products a market beyond Kelantan.

Factory supervisor Mahmod Mohd Nor has watched customer tastes change over decades. He said loyal buyers still value a familiar product that performs consistently:

Matches remain relevant. People use them to light fires and, for some, cigarettes. The quality is consistent and that is why customers keep buying.

The manager's estimate of a sales decline of 50 to 70 percent means demand is now roughly 30 to 50 percent of what it was thirty years earlier. Regular purchases still keep the lines moving, but the factory is serving a much smaller market than it once did.

The people behind the boxes

Many employees have spent their adult lives at the factory. Their work involves repeated, careful tasks, from handling materials and checking production to sorting and labelling the finished boxes.

Siti Mazenah, aged 55, is one of the longest serving employees. She labels and sorts matchboxes and works regular hours from Monday to Friday, roughly 9am to 4pm. She values the opportunity to move between tasks and learn different parts of production.

Explaining what she likes about her job, Siti said:

I like working here, they allow us to change job scope if we want to and I learn a lot about the processes.

Predictable hours are part of the job's appeal and are a rarity in many factories. Individual schedules and the plant's operating week are not identical: while employees such as Siti work weekdays, the factory can run six days a week depending on orders.

Fakhrul Syahmi, aged 26, is among the younger workers, who are rare at the plant. He joined after getting married and was surprised to discover that the factory was still operating. His friends had assumed it had already closed.

Describing their reaction to his job, Fakhrul said:

Even my friends were shocked when I told them I was working at this match factory. They thought it had closed down.

How wood becomes a finished matchbox

The factory has three main lines: one makes the matchsticks, another makes the boxes, and the third handles packing. Each depends on materials moving through several stages before a finished box is ready for shipment.

Wood arrives as sheets or slats, now imported mainly from China because suitable local timber is scarce. Machines cut the slats into thin splints. These are dried and sorted into racks for dipping, preparing the sticks to receive the materials that will help them burn.

Each stick gets a thin coat of wax so that the flame can travel along it. The tip is then dipped in a paste that burns hot and bright. A typical safety match head combines an oxidizer, fillers and binders. The oxidizer helps the burning reaction, while the other ingredients help form and hold the head together.

The head catches when it is drawn across the friction surface on the box. Consistency is essential: paste that is too wet can leave a head that crumbles, while paste that is too dry will not ignite. Workers constantly test samples and remove weak batches.

Paperboard follows a different route. It is cut and folded into boxes, labels are pasted on, and a striking strip is added along one side. Workers check cartons by hand and feed finished boxes into a tall storage silo, where they rest to avoid damage before shipment.

When demand peaks, the lines can produce close to 96,000 boxes per day. Each box is about 20 millimeters high and holds roughly 50 matchsticks. At those figures, a day's production would contain about 4.8 million sticks, showing how a small, familiar household item adds up across a full production run.

Why the factory now relies on China

Wood once came from forests close to Kota Bharu. Decades of development, alongside stricter rules on logging and processing, have reduced the availability of suitable local material.

Matchstick wood needs a straight grain and a uniform structure so that the splints do not split during drying and dipping. Suitable species are less available locally, and timber that meets those requirements is often reserved for uses that bring a higher return.

Imports from China have allowed the factory to keep operating. They also make the cost of a matchbox sensitive to expenses far beyond the factory gate, including freight rates and currency swings. A change in the cost of transporting or paying for wood feeds into a product sold at a low price.

Chemical inputs, energy and packaging have also become more expensive. Managers say there is little room to absorb those increases, but raising prices too far could drive away rural customers who still buy matches by the carton.

The factory therefore faces pressure from both sides: fewer sales than a generation ago and higher costs for the materials needed to make each box. Maintaining an affordable product matters because the remaining customers often buy it for ordinary household use.

Small labels with a lasting following

Kelantan's matchboxes carry designs that many Malaysians recognise. The factory has produced Tiger Head and Two Tigers, alongside a catalogue that includes Cap Lada, or Chilli Brand; Cap Helang, or Eagle; Cap Keris, or Dagger; Cap 99; and Cap Bintang, or Star.

Tigers, eagles and daggers became familiar motifs on matchboxes in Malaya and later Malaysia. Vivid reds and yellows still make the labels noticeable on shop shelves. These small printed rectangles also preserve something of the places and periods in which they were made.

Collectors of matchbox labels and related items are known as phillumenists. They trade and archive designs from different eras, giving the packaging a second life after its everyday purpose has ended.

The factory's souvenir production includes matches made for the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur. Such special runs sit alongside the ordinary branded boxes that continue to go to shops and hotels.

For some Malaysians, opening a box of Cap Lada or Cap Helang brings back a memory as well as providing a flame. That connection helps sustain interest in the product even when a lighter can be bought for roughly the price of a single carton of matches.

Visitors arrive without a tourism programme

The factory has quietly become a stop for travellers exploring Kelantan, although the company has never turned it into a formal museum. Employees are accustomed to people peering through doorways and asking how the machines work.

Visitors arrive by bus or car, often without warning. They want photographs, a glimpse of production and a few boxes as souvenirs. Wee said these unplanned visits can be frequent and sometimes numerous:

They just show up out of nowhere. Every day they come. So many of them sometimes.

Kota Bharu is also a centre for batik and songket weaving, wood carving, wau kite making and wayang kulit shadow puppetry. The match factory sits within that wider map of crafts and traditions, while remaining an industrial workplace making goods for everyday use.

The attraction is the continuing operation itself: machines still make the product, workers still check and pack it, and customers still place orders. The public attention exists alongside production, without a formal tourism plan.

A possible closure, and reasons to continue

Warnings about the factory's future have suggested it could close within three to five years if demand keeps shrinking. No closure date has been announced. The concern centres on falling sales, a small workforce, ageing equipment and the cost of imported wood.

Regular business from hotels and traditional markets offers one way to maintain volumes. Specialty runs for collectors and tourism partners could bring better returns without large spending on new equipment. These are possible ways to support the business, rather than announced changes to its operation.

Skills transfer programmes, apprenticeships and recognition as a heritage craft could also help bring younger workers into a trade that requires patience and precision. Fakhrul's presence shows that younger employees do join, even though they remain uncommon.

Wee continues to guide the factory with the practical approach of someone who has spent more than thirty years there. Asked about its uncertain future, the manager described his immediate intention:

I do not know how long this will last. For now, I will just keep working.

For the factory, continued operation depends on enough customers buying an inexpensive item to cover the rising cost of making it. Its familiar brands, experienced workers and visitor interest give it reasons to carry on, while the decline in demand remains the central pressure on the business.

Key Points

• Founded in 1933 in Sungai Keladi near Kota Bharu, Kelantan Match Factory is widely regarded as Malaysia's last operating match manufacturer.
• The workforce has fallen from roughly 1,000 people working three shifts to about 25 to 30 employees.
• Manager Matchstick Wee estimates that sales are down 50 to 70 percent compared with thirty years earlier.
• The factory can produce about 96,000 boxes a day when orders require it, with roughly 50 matches in each box.
• Most raw materials come from China because suitable local timber is scarce and logging and processing rules have tightened.
• Rural households, cooks and hotels continue to buy matches, while collectors and visitors value the boxes and their designs.
• Brands include Tiger Head, Two Tigers, Cap Lada, Cap Helang, Cap Keris, Cap 99 and Cap Bintang.
• Closure within three to five years has been raised as a possibility if demand continues to fall, but no closure date has been announced.