ITW has recently acquired all of the outstanding shares of VS Acquisition Holding Inc., the parent company of Vitronics Soltec Corporation, one of the global leaders in soldering equipment (reflow, wave and selective), software and related services used in the assembly of circuit boards and the packaging of semiconductor devices. As usual in these events, the terms of the transaction were not disclosed. VS Acquisition Holding Inc. will be a wholly owned business unit of ITW and part of the company’s existing power systems and electronics businesses. ITW will continue to operate VS Acquisition Holding Inc. as a separate business under the Vitronics Soltec brand name. Thus the main content so far of the corporation’s HQ’s official announcement.
The original Soltec company, founded back in Holland in 1916 as a soldering firm, has a business vitae of more than 90 years. Later – just about 6 years ago, if I remember correctly – they acquired US-based solder-machine supplier Vitronics. Vitronics Soltec Corporation is now based in Stratham, New Hampshire, with affiliates in Oosterhout, Holland and Suzhou, China. Sales and support centers are located in the United States, Holland, Germany, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea and Shanghai. According to the company, more than 15,000 soldering systems are installed worldwide. Florian Graf, German area sales manager of Vitronics Soltec, expects strong support for the activities over here as a result of this move. “We are delighted by the acquisition since it will open new opportunities for us with customers who we couldn’t reach before.” According to Graf, the company will practically operate as before as an independent unit under the ITW umbrella. He does not assume that the change will have any downside effects for the customers and users. Just the opposite seems true for him: There must be some valuable synergy effects because of the completion with Speedline and Kester.
A closer look at Speedline reveals that these are a blend of different companies, originally part of the Cookson Group a few years ago. Accel is a cleaning specialist for microelectronics, Camalot delivers dispensing equipment, MPM stands for stencil and screen printing machines, and finally Electrovert is the reflow equipment firm. Yes, both companies, Vitronics Soltec and Electrovert, were – at least in an important area of interest – competitors delivering reflow equipment. According to the equipment fact sheets there seems to be a demand for conversations behind closed doors in order to figure out what to do with this oven overlap. However, Vitronics Soltec was apparently more successful with wave and selective soldering systems, not so much with reflow systems.
Juergen Spahn, European sales director of Speedline, appears very relaxed in evaluating the current situation. “Well, we report to Speedline in the USA, and in turn our US-based colleagues are contacting ITW. The newly acquired Vitronics Soltec firm has to report directly to ITW. These are quite different ways for decision-making. Furthermore, Vitronics Soltec will now enjoy the 20/80 strategy of the corporation, where they will provide 80 % of their turnover with 20 % of their potential customers. This will provide them with additional momentum important for their business development. I assume that before we have talks about the evaluation of the different soldering machine offers, more months will go by.” However, he will not preclude such useful coordination in the future.
The almost 100 years old business conglomerate ITW runs their 825 different businesses on a long lead, decentralized in a subtle way, under its umbrella. They are located in 52 countries and employ some 60,000 people.
It is an extremely diversified multinational corporation with lots of different commerces. In general, these are manufacturers of highly engineered components, industrial systems and consumables. In fiscal 2007 about $16.2 bn in revenues were reached, and before taxes 2.62 bn were left. It seems that the exceedingly profitable corporation can even spend more from its wallet for the acquisition of other candidates in this industry. Until now, it appears that a placement equipment supplier is missing in their portfolio. (Gerhard B. Wolski)
EPP Europe 413
