2008.12.24 Electronics Newspaper New Growth Articles

◇ Economies of scale through M & A = The most distinctive tendency of the PCB market this year is M & A. In the past, there were some cases of M & A made by small PCB makers. In May, LG Micron declared a comprehensive component company, which is equivalent to Samsung Electro-Mechanics, while LG Electronics handed over its PCB business to LG Electronics. Although the merger between LG Micron and LG Innotek has been postponed at the end of the year due to the sudden instability of the financial sector in 2H08. LG is also determined to foster its PCB business at the group level. The largest PCB maker, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, signed a deal in October to acquire ‘UniCap’, a Taiwanese PCB maker ‘J3’, in Kunshan, China. SKC and Kolon, both companies in the field of polyimide (PI) film for PCBs, finally unveiled their joint venture ‘GLOM’ in June. It was evaluated as an attempt to secure self-sustained ability to confront foreign companies by proactively integrating strengths rather than consuming competition in the domestic market.

◇ Full-fledged entry into China = Bihai (representative Kim Jae-chang), a mid-sized PCB maker, first broke into a full-fledged signal to advance into the Chinese market. As a domestic PCB maker, BHI first built a PCB production plant in June and started operation in Shandong, China. Among Korean small and medium-size PCB companies, they have entered the Chinese market through joint venture or indirect investment. In particular, the plant has a monthly production capacity of 20,000 square meters of flexible PCB and rigid PCB. The company is expected to generate sales of more than 10 billion won this year, the first year of operation. Samsung Electro-Mechanics has also taken the opportunity to take a more aggressive approach to the Chinese handset market through the acquisition of China Unicab.

◇ Diversification of Equipment Industry Market = Equipment and equipment industry, which is a typical PCB back-end industry, expanded its export market all over the world this year. Seoh robot industry (representative Kim, Se-young) supplied “cover ray automatic folding” equipment to Kyosera of Japan last July. The fourth Korea (Representative Baek Tae Il) exported ‘Plasma Desmear’ system to Prism Circutronics PVT of India PCB maker in August. In the past, SM (CEO Lee, Soo Jae) exported PCB copper plating equipment to FCI Micro Connections in France in February. Gigabyte (CEO: Kim Jong-joon) was awarded the ‘Bronze Tower Industrial Medal’ on the Export Day this year, thanks to its self-developed automatic optical inspection equipment (AOI) Korea Electronic Circuit Industry