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Sime Darby sells and services cars, heavy machinery and industrial equipment across Asia and beyond.
Sime Darby Berhad is a Malaysian conglomerate with two very different engines under one roof: a motors business and an industrial equipment business. The motors side is the bigger one, bringing in roughly two-thirds of revenue. It sells and services cars — mostly luxury brands like BMW, Porsche, and Jaguar Land Rover — across Malaysia, Singapore, China, Australia, and Thailand. The industrial side sells and maintains heavy machinery: Caterpillar earthmovers, mining trucks, and the kind of equipment you'd see digging up a coal pit or building a highway. So depending on the day, Sime Darby is either a car dealership empire or a Caterpillar dealer network, and it happens to be both.
Think of it as two businesses sharing a warehouse: one sells you a shiny new sedan, the other rents you the bulldozer that paved the road it drives on. Both are fundamentally about moving metal and then keeping it running — the real money in motors isn't just the sale, it's the service, parts, and financing that follow for years afterward. The industrial division works the same way: you sell a mining truck, then you sell parts and maintenance for the next decade. That recurring service revenue is the steady drumbeat underneath the lumpier equipment sales.
Sime Darby traces back to 1910, when it started as a British trading company managing rubber plantations in Malaya. Over the decades it grew into one of Malaysia's biggest conglomerates, dabbling in everything from palm oil to healthcare to property. A major turning point came in 2017, when the group split itself into three separate listed companies — Sime Darby Plantation, Sime Darby Property, and Sime Darby Berhad, which kept the motors and industrial assets. That's the company you see today: leaner, focused, and mostly a play on car demand in Asia and commodity-driven spending on big machines. It also pays regular dividends and, like most mature industrial groups, balances reinvesting in its dealership network with returning cash to shareholders.
Saved answer · last researched 11 Oct 2026