How LMS Compliance Went From A Lab to Building the Future of ESG

At LMS Compliance (LMS), trust is not a virtue but a business model. What started in petri dishes in 2006 has since moved onto factory floors, and increasingly, it is showing up inside the company's algorithms.

The Singapore-listed company specialises in testing, inspection, certification, and assurance services—commonly referred to as TICA. These four words may sound opaque to many, but as its CEO Dr. Ooi Shu Geok explains, LMS is in the business of verifying that the food you eat, the air you breathe, and the carbon emissions behind your products meet rigorous safety and sustainability standards. In essence, its job is to turn invisible risk into transparent proof, and its impact is widespread. 

“If you understand COVID testing, you understand what we do,” he explains. While COVID tests help identify and isolate infected individuals, LMS Compliance focuses on testing things that are often overlooked, including food, materials, emissions, safety systems. 

“It’s about making sure what you consume and rely on is safe, compliant, and sustainable,” Dr Ooi said.

Founded in Malaysia and listed on the Singapore Exchange’s Catalist board in 2022, LMS has been delivering strong revenue growth as it strives to become one of Southeast Asia’s most technically ambitious players in the ESG infrastructure space, prioritising in-house digital infrastructure and a long-term plan rooted in both science and software.

A laboratory and a digital ecosystem

From as early as 2007, LMS began developing its own Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS). Now in its fifth iteration, the platform has become an intelligent backbone for everything LMS does—automating data capture, enabling remote verification, and generating tamper-proof QR codes that link directly to compliance records.

Beyond simple reporting, LMS’s internal systems are also capable of linking emissions data to real-time dashboards, interfacing with ESG reporting frameworks, and even generating product quality ratings based on testing frequency and performance. These digital layers not only serve clients but differentiate LMS from its peers—many of whom still rely on manual processes or off-the-shelf software.

It is an end-to-end system built from scratch and it enables LMS to provide clients with verifiable, data-driven assurance.

The CEO who is also a technologist

All of this has been possible because Dr. Ooi, a technologist by training and a systems thinker by temperament, has played a crucial role in guiding LMS from a simple lab to a cross-border ESG solutions provider—often by building things himself.

Alongside running his company full-time, he earned his MBA in 2002, and then his DBA in 2022. His doctoral research into corporate sustainability now forms the basis of LMS’s assurance services, which support dozens of companies across Asia in preparing for climate disclosures, regulatory audits, and ESG reporting.

Dr. Ooi makes it a point to immerse himself in every part of the business, from developing digital frameworks to personally leading ESG workshops. This hands-on approach, he believes, has been key to LMS’s steady growth.

Complementing this is his leadership style, which blends discipline with deep curiosity. He shares that he learns best by doing, and can only lead what he understands deeply. To this end, he has always encouraged staff to adopt AI tools for compliance workflows, and insists on first-hand experience before delegation. 

“I told my team, you cannot just hardcode a dashboard. The power is in using AI to model variables, run regressions, and give you analysis with proper citation and reasoning,” he says. 

All of this is with a view of building for the long-term, and ensuring that things can be done sustainably. 

“Sustainability isn’t a buzzword to me," he adds, "it’s a system. People, planet, profit. If any one is missing, you can’t survive long term.”

Demonstrating this, LMS posted RM25.38 million in revenue (about S$7.6 million) for FY2024, a 21.4% increase from RM20.90 million in FY2023. This was driven by increased contributions from all five of its business segments—laboratory testing services, training and assurance, sales of goods, certification services, and lastly, the distribution of conformity assessment technology. 

Overall, profit before tax for FY2024 stood at RM7.81 million, marking 2.8% in growth from FY2023. 

Well-positioned for the ESG boom

Though LMS’s operational base is in Malaysia, its listing in Singapore has helped elevate its brand, attract top-tier talent, and position it for regional growth. It has built a strategic hybrid model allowing the company to be cost-efficient at home while tapping on Singapore’s financial infrastructure and global visibility.

From LMS’s point of view, this translates into a compelling proposition: a profitable, cash-positive business that owns its own digital IP, offers critical services in a growth sector, and is led by a CEO who believes, “Success is not about speed, it’s about staying power.”

Reflecting this, the company paid out a dividend of 1.10 Singapore cents per share in FY2024, a similar level to the dividend payout for FY2023. 

Its peers in Europe and North America might have had hundred-year head starts, but LMS is building something different: a homegrown solution for Asia, with the necessary cultural fluency and regulatory alignment.

“We’re here to make sure what companies say matches what they actually do,” Dr. Ooi says. 

After all, “Anyone can print a certificate, but only a few can survive audits, scrutiny, and repeated validations. That’s where trust is built.”

About LMS Compliance Ltd 

LMS Compliance Ltd. is a laboratory testing, certification and assurance services provider based in Malaysia and Singapore with an established track record of more than 15 years. The Group’s operations comprise: (1) Testing and Assessment, (2) Certification, (3) Trading, (4) Distribution of Conformity Assessment Technology, and (5) Assurance, Validation & Verification. 

The Group’s testing and assessment services include chemical, microbiology, nucleic acid and physical analyses for its clients across a gamut of sectors, from food and healthcare to industrial and green-tech, assisting them to achieve compliance with industry standards as well as product safety. In this regard, LMS Compliance has three accredited laboratories across Malaysia with the capability to conduct a range of accredited and non-accredited tests. 

For more information, please visit https://lmscompliance.com/index.html

About kopi-C: the Company brew

kopi-C is a regular column by SGX Research in collaboration with Beansprout that features C-level executives of leading companies listed on SGX. These interviews are profiles of senior management aimed at helping investors better understand the individuals who run these corporations.

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