News

2 April 2009

 

Oerlikon completes sale of Esec to BE Semiconductor

Oerlikon of Pfäffikon, Switzerland has completed the sale of its back-end chip assembly equipment business unit Oerlikon Esec (announced on 26 January) to BE Semiconductor Industries N.V. (Besi) of Duiven, The Netherlands, which manufactures die sorting, flip-chip and multi-chip die bonding, packaging and plating equipment, in exchange for 2.8 million of Besi’s ordinary shares.

Founded in 1968, Esec manufactures die bonding equipment for the semiconductor, telecoms and smart-card industries at its headquarters in Cham, Switzerland, and manufactures and services wire bonding systems from its Singapore assembly facility. Esec has an installed base of more than 9000 systems, in fiscal 2008 reported sales of CHF126m, and had 515 staff at the end of 2008. However, when the divestment of Esec was announced at the end of January, Oerlikon said that ongoing reorganization measures at Esec would be continued and extended. Of the 280 jobs at the Cham site, about 70 are affected, and another 80 were to be cut from Esec group worldwide.

“The successful completion of this divestiture marks an important milestone for Oerlikon in streamlining its portfolio around the core competencies in applications for thin-film and coating,” says Oerlikon’s CEO Dr Uwe Krüger. “The smooth integration of Besi and Esec, with its outstanding products and technologies, will further improve the joined company's competitiveness in the future," he adds. With this move, Oerlikon's exposure to the cyclical semiconductor market is reduced to a low single-digit percentage of sales.

“The purchase of Esec is a complementary product acquisition that fits well with our goal of becoming the world's leading assembly equipment company,” says Besi’s president & CEO Richard W. Blickman. “In combination with our Datacon product portfolio, the addition of Esec significantly expands our share of the die bonding system market, one of the most rapidly growing segments of the assembly equipment business."

At the end of January, BESI said that it targets synergies from the Esec acquisition by (i) using BESI’s Asian manufacturing operations and global supply chain network, (ii) integrating and coordinating R&D activities with BESI's Datacon die handling activities, (iii) leveraging the respective resources of the combined sales and customer support networks, and (iv) sharing and coordinating global IT and general and administrative functions.

See related item:

Oerlikon sells Esec and etch business units

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