By Karamjit Singh

Published in The Edge Malaysia on the week of 21st September 2009

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“Not many had heard of our company,” acknowledges Liew Choon Lian, chairman & CEO of MDT Group of companies which is in the radio frequency identification device (RFID) sector. However, that changed when its subsidiary MDT Innovations (MDTi), an MSC-status company, was awarded the MSC Malaysia Apicta 2007 Prime Minister’ Best of the Best Award for its RFID Reader Module.

Not only did MDT win the overall prize, three of its other submissions were also winners in three other categories in the same year, namely Best of Communications, Best of Security and Best of Research & Development for RFID related applications. This was enough for it to get noticed locally even though it was playing in a specialized niche that is not well known in Malaysia.

Prior to this, MDT was already well known in the Asian RFID sector, thanks to Liew’s active participation with various RFID bodies in the region and his collaborations with Japanese and Chinese companies in this sector.

The company’s main business activities include component engineering, system design, software development, and application solutions in RFID, advanced display devices and mobile information technologies.

MDTi’s core RFID activities are in design, R&D, implementation, and maintenance of RFID key components and system integration. Liew says the company’s engineering team focuses on developing full- fledged RFID key components, comprising RFID inlays, tags, readers/ scanners, antennae, and software tools. It is one of the pioneers in the passive 2.45GHz RFID systems. It already has two patents to its name, which were granted in Japan and China. The same patent application is pending from the Malaysian patent authority, MyIPO. It is also applying for four more patents.

By Sharen Kaur

Published in the New Straits Times on 19th September 2009

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RADIO frequency identification (RFID) technology specialist Multimedia Display Technologies Sdn Bhd (MDT) is aiming for more than RM100 million in revenue by 2012, driven by its new green technology product, PaperCard.

PaperCard is made of hardened paper layers without adding any plastic additives or laminating plastic foils.

It looks like an ATM card and is embedded with microchip tags and scanners to identify, authenticate, monitor and manage objects using RFID.

Kuala Lumpur, July 9, 2009—At a highly anticipated Iris Environmental Solutions Launching Event Thursday at Kuala Lumpur’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel. MDT Group of companies, Chairman and CEO Mr. Liew Choon Lian introduced a Papercard™ product he said would "revolutionize" the plastic card usage throughout the world.

"Since plastic card was introduced in 1950’s." Liew said to Tun Dr. Mahathir as showing the Papercard™  to him. “Today, MDT is releasing a piece of innovative green technology that will forever change the existing plastic card application trend and this a real ‘green card’ and it has nothing to do with US PR Card."

San Diego, CA, January 16, 2009— MDT today announced that it has been awarded as one of the Red Herring Top 100 Global Companies. Red Herring Top 100 Global Companies are chosen from winners and finalists of the previous North America, Europe and Asia Red Herring Top 100 Companies. Winning and finalist companies from the previous three years were eligible for this outstanding award. Out of 1,800 successful and highly eligible companies, the Red Herring editorial team deployed a detailed process to drill-down the best companies first to 200 finalists, then to the top 100 winners of this global award. Evaluations were made on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, innovation, management, global strategy, and ecosystem integration. The announcement of the winners was made at the Red Herring 100 Global taking place in San Diego from January 14-16, 2009. Present among the finalists were elite executives and venture capital leaders from around the world.

Silicon Valley, CA, December 2, 2008— Red Herring today announced that MDT was a winner of the Red Herring 100 Award, a selection of the 100 most innovative private technology companies based in Asia.

The Red Herring editorial board diligently surveyed the entrepreneurial scene throughout Asia and identified the top 100 out of more than 1,000 closely evaluated companies that are leading the next wave of innovation.

Kuala Lumpur, 11 August 2008 – MDT Innovations Sdn. Bhd., a world leader in RFID solution systems for the tag, reader and multiple platform middleware, announced today the mass production of HF RFID Mini Reader.

MDT Innovations signed a production deal with JTech Manufacturing (Karawang, Indonesia) in December 2007. JTech Manufacturing has set up the production line for the mini reader with the support of MDT Innovations.  The manufacturing capacity is now at 100,000 mini readers per month and will be increased to 1 million units per month by the end of 2008.

Production quantities in Karawang include MDT Innovations’ new UMR300, aimed at computers, notebooks and PDA with USB host controller, as well as the previously introduced reader module, MD770R, for use in PDA, standalone readers and mobile devices.