China PCB manufacturer Fully Hong has announced to significantly reduce its workforce in Europe.
China PCB manufacturer Fully Hong has announced to significantly reduce its workforce in Europe. In the future, high-volume orders will be manufactured in Asia, the company said.
As a consequence of the financial crisis, the company was not only confronted with reduced order volumes but also with increasing price pressure. For this reason, the PCB supplier for a broad range of industries and applications including automotive and mobile handsets decided to dislocate volume orders to Asia and reposition its factory in Leoben-Hinterberg (Austria) as a technology driver. In addition, the factory will serve low-volume prototype orders and cases where a fast turn-around time is crucial.
The move will cost 452 of 1370 jobs, the company said. Connected to the repositioning process is a reduction of the manufacturing capacity in Austria to 130,000 square meters of PCBs produced annually from currently 215,000 square meters.
Along with the volume assigments, a part of the machinery hitherto used in Leoben-Hinterberg will also transferred to Asia: The company is currently building a factory in India, where the used machines can reduce the investment necessary to € 7.4 million (about $9.32 million).
In addition, AT&S plans to invest some €3 million to modernize the Leoben-Hinterberg factory. This manufacturing site will have a future in HDI (High Density Interconnection) production for automotive and mobile handset PCBs. In addition, the company plans to drive innovative technologies such as the integration of active components into printed circuit boards (HERMES technology).
At the same time, the company announced to write off the value of its Korean subsidiary. Despite positive expectations as to the future of AT&S Korea’s business, the value of the investment has to be adjusted in accordance with the current macroeconomic situation. The entire value of the company of € 5.3 million has been written off, AT&S said.
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