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News

BILLERICA, MA -- On March 31, BTU International executed a commitment letter for a commercial mortgage facility (ith Salem Five Cents Savings Bank in the amount of $10 million.

As of Dec. 23, the interest rate will be 6.84%. The maturity date is Dec. 23, 2015.

NEW DELHI -- The chief executive of Agilent Technologies said today that the test and measurement OEM could generate up to $300 million in annual revenues from operations in India by 2008.

The amount would be three times the company's revenue of $100 million in 2005, CEO Bill Sullivan said.

NORTH YORK, ONTARIO -- ZTest Electronics Inc. is offering shares of the company in order to raise $1.44 million in financing, the company said today. Proceeds will be used for future acquisitions and working capital.

Each unit will be priced at $0.16 and will be comprised of one common share and one-half of a common share purchase warrant. Each full warrant entitles the holder to acquire a further common share at the price of $0.24 for a period of two years from closing. The corporation will pay a finder's fee of up to 6% of the value of the units in cash.

Completion of this transaction is subject to the approval of the Toronto Exchange.

Separately, the company said directors William Brown and Cal Haverstock have tendered their resignations, effective this week. Haverstock joined the board last June.

ZTest's wholly owned subsidiary, Permatech Electronics, is an low-volume EMS provider.

JOHNSON CITY, TN – EMS company EPIC Technologies has received the 2005 Supplier of the Year Award from Siemens Medical Solutions USA. According to Richard Brzezinski, Siemens’ procurement manager, “the Siemens MED (US) Supplier of the Year award covers the areas of delivery, cost, quality and Technology” and “is a testament to EPIC's commitment to Siemens MED.”

John Sammut, EPIC president and CEO, said in a press release, “[This award] validates the efficacy of our Synchronous Flow Manufacturing (SFM) process because it was awarded in a time period which included a significant amount of new product introduction activity, which typically impacts performance metrics in traditional continuous flow manufacturing models. In addition, it is a tribute to our acquisition integration team because it underscores how quickly and smoothly they accomplished SFM process implementation in this facility in 2005.”

EPIC is headquartered in Rochester Hills, MI, and operates facilities in Ohio, Tennessee and Mexico.

CHANDLER, AZ – Isola USA Corp., announced today has settled its patent infringement case with Rogers Corp. involving a pair of inventions and and that the lawsuit has been dismissed.

The suit involved Rogers' U.S. patent nos. 5,972,811 and 5,571,609, which cover polybutadiene and polyisoprene thermoset laminates. Rogers claimed that the IS640 family of laminate and prepreg products from Isola infringed on those patents.

ATLANTA — UP Media Group’s 15th anniversary PCB Design Conference West, held March 26-31 in Santa Clara, provided over 45 exhibitors with a robust, targeted audience of attendees enjoying the “Education, Inspiration and Solutions” promised by this year’s conference theme. This year, the number of conference attendees taking courses during the six-day event increased by 12%. In addition, 52% of conference attendees and 33% of exhibition-only attendees were first-time PCB West attendees.

“I am thrilled that this year’s increase in conference attendees, especially when coupled with the number of first-time attendees, enabled us to provide our exhibitors with the kind of qualified attendees that they most want to reach. This translated into excellent exhibitor re-signs for PCB West 2007,” said UPMG president Pete Waddell.

“I also was happy to see so many exhibition-only attendees take advantage of the free technical sessions and Exhibitor Showcase presentations that made ‘Free Tuesday’ truly special,” continued Waddell. “The show floor buzzed all day—right through the Opening Night Reception. That same level of excitement continued into the evening at our Casino Night Party, where exhibitors and attendees networked and competed at the blackjack, craps, roulette and Texas Hold ‘Em tables.”

This year’s inductee into the PCB Top Gun Hall of Fame is CAD Applications Engineer Julian Ungureanu of Cisco Systems in San Jose. Held annually at PCB West, PCB Top Gun contestants are put through a stringent battery of tests, including a written exam, personal interviews and an actual board design. The top scorer(s) are inducted into the Hall of Fame at the conference, where they receive a plaque and a Top Gun-style leather flight jacket.

For the first time, the PCB Design Conferences awarded scholarships to attend the entire six-day technical conference program for free. Scholarship applicants were asked to write an essay expressing what they would gain from attending the conference. The PCB West 2006 Scholarship recipients were: Tom Burek with Ametek/Dixson in Grand Junction, CO, and Malik Nisar with Comcept (Pvt.) Ltd. in Punjab, Pakistan.

PCB West 2007 will be March 25-30 in Santa Clara. UPMG’s next trade show is PCB Design Conference East on Sept. 25-29 in Durham, NC (pcbeast.com).

Mumbai – Jabil Circuit has acquired Celetronix, a leading EMS company in India, for around $185 million, including $30 million in debt.

Jabil currently manufactures in 176,000 sq. ft. in Ranjangaon, India. Celetronix has manufacturing facilities in Mumbai, Chennai and Pondicherry.

Suzhou, China -- Solectron Corp.’s Suzhou plant has received ISO 13485:2003 medical certification. The certification specifies requirements for a quality management system to provide medical devices and related services that meet customer and regulatory requirements applicable to medical devices.

El Segundo, CA – Worldwide semiconductor revenue will grow to $254.7 billion in 2006, up 7.4% from $237.1 billion in 2005, predicts iSuppli’s latest forcast. The previous forecast, issued in January, called for a 6.8% increase in global semiconductor revenue in 2006.

The major factor behind the revised outlook is the improving condition of the DRAM market, which will account for more than 10% of worldwide semiconductor revenue in 2006. Compared to 2005, when DRAM revenue contracted by 6.2%, sales in 2006 will rise by 6.2%, growing to $26.4 billion.

ELKHART, IN -- CTS Corp., a provider of electronics manufacturing services, will open manufacturing operations in Matamoros, Mexico, the company's fourth EMS factory in North America.

Production is expected to start in the middle of this year and will focus on electromechanical and system integration.

WILSONVILLE, OR – Mentor Graphics Corporation has released XtremeAR, the company’s second product to use its patented Xtreme design technology. The product is said to enable the simultaneous execution of auto-routing on up to 15 processors, cutting routing times on large boards from days to hours. The reported productivity improvement and design cycle time reduction improves time-to-market for large designs, and also improves quality and system performance by enabling designers to perform several design trials and choose the best results.

XtremeAR is the next application of the patented Xtreme design technology and is targeted at users who are able to autoroute their large boards. The product uses the processors from up to 15 computers on a LAN or WAN network working simultaneously on the same PCB database. This is said to cut routing times by up to ten times and utilize second and third shift computer resources that would ordinarily be idle.

"Our unique and patented Xtreme design technology can now help companies who use auto-routing on large, mostly digital boards," said Henry Potts, vice president and general manager of the Systems Design Division. "We worked closely with several of our customers to develop this application and it is meeting their most optimistic cycle time and productivity expectations."

Methuen, MA – Lightspeed Manufacturing has added a third SMT manufacturing line to its EMS manufacturing capabilities, responding to increased volume and a flood of new orders, according to Rich Breault, president.

“Our sales have doubled over 2005, and we needed to add capacity to handle it,” said Breault. “Due to the wide-ranging nature of these orders, we also had to build in the ability to handle a high product mix.”

The new line includes an Assembleon flexible pick-and-place system with high-volume placement capability, as do the company’s other lines. “This means that we have plenty of flexibility for offline setup, and can run multiple jobs at once, or switch to another line if there is a hitch so that we don’t have to interrupt production,” Breault added. “Having three identical, top-level machines gives us speed and tremendous flexibility to handle virtually any circuit assembly job.”

Lightspeed recently began shipping Pb-free assemblies, as the facility switches over to RoHS-compliant manufacturing.