Circuits Assembly Online Magazine - News

Latest News

FREMONT, CA – Juki Automation Systems has opened a Western US headquarters here. At 13,500 sq. ft., the facility facility is four times larger than Juki’s previous location.

MONTREAL – Once a growing EMS company with three sites in Canada, Triton Electronik has closed its doors.

FRAMINGHAM, MA -- Worldwide server factory sales fell 30.1% year-over-year to $9.8 billion in the second quarter, IDC said this week.

NEW YORK – The global consumer electronics market will grow at a CAGR of about 5% from 2009 to 2012, a new research report says.

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Worldwide Energy and Manufacturing USA reported second-quarter revenue increased 51% to $10.32 million on strong sales in the solar energy division.

PECS, HUNGARY – Elcoteq has pledged to soon employ 7,000 workers here again, following a meeting with government officials in Budapest, say published reports.

Elcoteq announced early last month it would let 700 workers go at the end of September. It currently employs about 4,000 at the site.

But after meeting with top Elcoteq leaders, a leading Socialist Party official said the cuts are temporary. “Founder of Elcoteq Antii Piippo and chairman CEO Jouni Hartikainen assured us that Elcoteq made a strategic decision when it set up its European production centre in Pécs,” said Socialist Party member Endre Bókay, according to reports.

SHENZHEN -- SMTA China last week presented awards for seven papers for its annual SMTA South China technical conference.

TEMPE, AZ -- Manufacturing economic activity expanded in August for the first time in 19 months and the overall economy grew for the fourth consecutive month, according to the latest survey of US supply executives.

WATERLOO, ONTARIO – Terepac Corp. has begun shipping samples of its ultra-thin, flexible, silicon-based products from its plant here, says CEO Ric Asselstine.

Following four years of development, the company is entering into pilot scale production of Microscale Circuit Cluster products.

Terepac is beginning with HF/NFC and UHF embedded electronic products, and has signed agreements with two customers. It will progress into wirelessly networked sensors.

The company has signed a collaboration contract with a research institute to fabricate and commercialize a flexible medical monitoring system.

SANTA ANA, CA – PCB manufacturer TTM Technologies will close a pair of plants in California and lay off 347 workers because of continued weak demand in North America for PCBs and backplanes.

The firm will take charges of $11 million and $14 million as its pares its footprint and trims its workforce by 11%.

The closures to the company’s plants Los Angeles and Hayward, CA, will put 263 and 84 employees, respectively, out of work.

TTM will transfer PCB production from LA facility to other company sites in California, Utah and Wisconsin.

Backplane assembly services provided by the Hayward plant will be transferred to the company's other backplane assembly plants in Shanghai and Stafford Springs, CT.

The company expects to record between $11 million and $14 million in separation, asset impairment and disposal costs related to these closures, primarily in the third quarter of 2009.

Excluding asset impairment charges and closure costs, the firm expects to achieve its earnings and revenue guidance for the third quarter with revenue in a range of $134 million to $142 million.

BROMONT, QUEBEC – The governments of Quebec and Canada have announced a $178-million grant to the Université de Sherbrooke to establish a microelectronics innovation center.

The purpose of the project, supported by $83 million from the Canadian government and $95 million from the Quebec government, is to create a global center of excellence for research and innovation in 200-mm based MEMS and 3-D wafer level packaging, as well as advanced technologies associated with the assembly and packaging of silicon chips.

Founding partners include DALSA, IBM Canada and Université de Sherbrooke. The founding partners and various semiconductor equipment suppliers will provide support for ongoing operations.

SAN JOSE – Peter C. Tortorici and Paul Gerris of Medtronic Microelectronics Center will keynote the Medical Electronics Symposium this month.

Tortorici’s presentation will cover implantable medical devices: past successes, current status, future possibilities and challenges; Gerris will discuss a leading application for integrated 3-D systems.

The event, hosted by SMTA and MEPTEC, will take place Sept. 16-17 at Arizona State University in Tempe.

Other sessions will include market trends and forecast in medical electronics; emerging and enabling technologies; component manufacturing at the chip and packaging level; technologies that enable implantable devices; materials and design at the board and systems levels; systems manufacturing; reliability, safety and regulatory testing, and system level products and applications – external instrumentation.