SELANGOR DARUL EHSANM, MALAYSIA -- LTKM Berhad, a leading chicken egg producer, today announced a composite proposal under which the company will divest its existing business and venture into electronics manufacturing services.

MUNICH -- Katek has signed a comprehensive, exclusive term sheet to acquire Canadian electronics manufacturing services provider SigmaPoint Technologies.

MILPITAS, CA -- Sales of printed circuit board and multichip module design software increased 13.9% to $333.7 million in the period ended Dec. 31, the ESD Alliance announced today.

BANNOCKBURN, IL – The electronics manufacturing supply chain is already feeling the impact of the Russia-Ukraine War, according to new data from IPC.

MILPITAS, CA – SEMI, in partnership with Ignited Education, Foothill College and Krause Center for Innovation, has won a $1 million California Apprenticeship Initiative New and Innovative Grant for the development of a semiconductor pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship program to expand the pathway to careers in the microelectronics industry.

BANNOCKBURN, IL — IPC is now accepting abstracts for technical paper presentations, technical posters, and professional development courses for IPC Apex Expo 2023. The technical conference will be held Jan. 21-26, 2023, and professional development courses will take place Jan. 24-26, 2023, at the San Diego Convention Center.

TECATE, MEXICO – VTech’s first EMS facility outside Asia is making progress toward establishing production.

KUALA LUMPUR – VS Industry posted fiscal second quarter net profit of RM44.5 million (US$10.5 million), down 30% year-over-year and up 13% sequentially.

TOULOUSE, FRANCE – Actia, All Circuits and Lacroix launched a three-year Power Electronic Manufacturing Services (PREMS) project to accelerate manufacturing of the power electronics of electric vehicles in France.

BANNOCKBURN, IL — Total North American EMS shipments in February were down 9.7% compared to the same month last year and 0.3% sequentially. EMS orders for the month fell 23.8% year-over-year and 14.8% sequentially.

BANNOCKBURN, IL – Total North American PCB shipments in February were up 12.8% year-over-year and 8.9% sequentially.

More than 15 years ago, the Restriction of the Use of Hazardous Substances in Electronics (RoHS) went into effect with great fanfare. While it had far-reaching effects, the most prominent material affected was lead.

Lead has for decades been the industry’s bad boy. (I’d say red-headed stepchild, but I am still mostly red-headed.) Several attempts were made in the US alone to eliminate its use, and the remediation and eradication efforts for lead in plumbing has had a pronounced effect on lowering rates of birth defects and learning disabilities. While an EU mandate, RoHS had a ripple effect throughout electronics-producing regions, and most eventually migrated to using lead-free materials in electronics solder as well.

As the early RoHS end-use exemptions expired, the number of electronics hardware applications using lead has become limited primarily to legacy high-reliability programs. One of the last holdouts has been the US Department of Defense, and even that pendulum is swinging. The last few US defense appropriations bills have included millions of dollars in funding to support the transition of various aerospace, defense and high-performance electronics to lead-free technologies.

But as we focus on the molecules, are we missing the larger compound? By that I mean the ability to recycle and reuse the materials in electronics products, regardless of their relative toxicity?