“The outlook in Europe for this year and the following aren’t exceptionally good nor bad. High-volume manufacturing is on its way to the South-East, especially China; what’s left are high-quality products which aren’t produced in high quantities, except automotive electronics”. Huub Baren, founder and CEO of the now ten years young IPTE group (Integrated Production & Test Engineering), looks carefully and controlled optimistically into the near future of electronics business.
Headquartered in Belgian Genk, the previously small firm on its way to becoming the renown IPTE group has encountered continual and sound growth in its business activities in this last couple of years, until 2000. Starting with a turnover of a mere euro 0.8m back in 1993, the automation specialist reached 108m in 2000. During this time, there was a series of years with a doubling of sales each time. This was primarily achieved by both acquisitions of small firms as well as outstanding business success. About ten companies were overtaken during this time, among these Philips Automation of Test, Grundig Electronics/PTS, Connect Systems, ARF Test, And Elec, Autoveyor or Ratio Slovakia. CEO Baren underlines, “As soon as we see a good and encouraging opportunity and provided a company fits excellently into our group, we will become active for a further acquisition”. Also, offices were opened in the UK, USA, France, Germany, Nordic Countries, Singapore, Romania, etc. In the booming year 2000, IPTE went public and is now listed at the stock exchange in Brussels.
As with many other high-techs, the slump followed in the years 2001/2002. Despite the again maintained high sales figure of euro 108m, 2001 saw a net loss of euro 8.2m, primarily because of necessary business consolidation measures. The company was forced to say adios to about 300 employees, just one third of the complete workforce. “This was really a very hard job for us, since most of them had been hired just recently”, regretted Baren (not the tough hire-and-fire principal) with a sigh. And last year the turnover dropped even to euro 90m. However, because of the cost-reducing measures taken before, the financial result seems balanced (but the exact figures were not available before editorial deadline). For this year, he expects some consolidation in the business and likewise for the group, which will again jump to the 100m-region of sales, and again to a staff of about 950.
These plain figures don’t say much about the details of the IPTE commerce, centered on electronics manufacturing. The lion’s share of its activity is engineering and supply of automation equipment to the electronics industry, providing turnkey systems for handling and routing of boards, board assembly and test. This is offered, for example, with the inclusion of sophisticated fixturing of critical wireless products, with labeling/barcode reading, dispensing, die sorting, flip-chip/chip-on-board methods, placement/insertion of standard components, odd-form placement, selective soldering, in-line integration and so on. These solutions are strictly based on a cell or module concept which will be efficiently configured and integrated according to customers´ requirements. The access to a wealth of expertise in application design and support in this area helps to define a position on the leading edge of competition. “One of our biggest advantages is that we have about 70 highly experienced application specialists available in the fields of automation in PCB production, in board assembly and in manufacturing test”, as Huub Baren underlined with emphasis. “In our business I don’t see any other company which has such a profound resource”. With this immense knowledge of processes and technologies, he points out further, the group can provide solutions to practically all tasks, be they PCB production, assembly of boards with conventional surface mount methods or in the area of advanced packages and techniques.
Even solutions which are commonly branded “special” can be designed and built with the use of standard machine components and program modules, providing a ready-made base to a percentage of about 60 to 80%. “For the realization of such a high level of already available building blocks, our equipment needs to be designed with the highest flexibility in mind, and our engineers also have to be very clever in their work of accommodating hard and software to match the customer’s demand perfectly,” the CEO brings it to the point.
The other main part of activities is subcontracting in the manufacturing of glass fiber and other cables of all kinds, as well as in board assembly and production test and its integration in all facets with medium-sized production volumes. The subcontracting business is mainly focused on Europe, say Benelux, because the location of the fabs plays a decisive role in keeping tight contact with the clients. In addition, from the logistical aspect and the costs acquainted with the transport, just-in-time-delivery, etc, the location of the site is highly significant. Moreover not to be forgotten: a common understanding of tasks and how they are to be solved, and also the position within a comparable or the same time zone is essential here.
Within the ten years now gone, the group developed to a global player, having virtually all big electronics manufacturers on its reference list. Huub Baren, defining the goals, “We will perform as a leading automation partner for the global electronics industry, and on the other hand as a subcontractor for professional highend products”. Therefore, no wonder, besides the strong European presence, Asia and America have also become very important playgrounds for activities, especially for efficient automation solutions. “We accompany our customers to all their global production sites. Only this way, effective and optimized solutions can be provided to the big players”. As a result, IPTE is currently directly present in about 20 countries, for example; in Shenzen and Shanghai offices have been opened just recently, and also the presence in the Americas will be enlarged remarkably in the near future.
Huub Baren sees the market this year generally flat, but for the company he expects a plus of about 10% on a conservative estimation of the possibilities. For him, consumer electronics is low, industrial and medical electronics are important and perform well, but medical isn’t a huge market, and telecom is far away from its booming heights of 2000. Especially the area of automotive electronics is a large and prosperous market in Europe, still growing with excellent rates. “With our high-availability solutions, EMS (electronic manufacturing services) as well as OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) can reach higher productivity, perform better processes with higher quality and this way reduce their manufacturing costs”. In a nutshell: the IPTE group’s CEO seems confident that IPTE will perform well in this flat business environment, but is very careful in expecting too much, since the last two years have seen a number of brave ideas failing. Reportedly, in its field of business, the group is the European market leader.
Gerhard B. Wolski
