"You can't expand without public funds; to depend on your own funds would be wholly insufficient," he said, citing listed examples such as Switzerland's LafargeHolcim, Germany's HeidelbergCement Group, and China's Anhui Conch Cement. For foreign cement makers with annual production capacity of 100 million MT, comprising several plants of various capacities, capital expenditure can be US$10 billion. The business is a very capital intensive one, he said. Compact Metal - what the company used to be called - was a struggling aluminium product supplier that was placed on the watch-list in 2015 after posting three straight years of losses with market caps below S$40 million. An internal restructuring led Compact Metal to enter a scheme of arrangement to shift its shares and listing status to ICG, an investment holding company owned by executive directors Mr Ma and Zhang Zengtao.