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CircuiTree tours the Flextronics Zhuhai campus, where Multek alone has 5,500 employees capable of producing 14 million square feet of PCBs each year.
During IPC Printed Circuits Expo 2005, former Flextronics CEO Michael Marks delivered the event's keynote speech in which he recalled a conversation with some potential customers. When asked how Flextronics planned to compete with its Chinese rivals, Marks casually responded, "We are China."
Though many in the audience wondered what Marks meant, a visit to Flextronics largest Chinese campus gave credence to his comments. The Zhuhai campus is massive, seeming more like a city than an industrial park. Located about 75 minutes northwest of Hong Kong, the Zhuhai campus is positioned, like Flextronics, to serve the booming Chinese market and far beyond.
Though Flextronics is known for its contract manufacturing prowess, its PCB subsidiary, Multek, is nearly as impressive in size and scope. Now the world's thirteenth largest PCB manufacturer, Multek is truly a global fabricator, with eight facilities on four continents, including manufacturing plants in Brazil, America, Germany and China. But make no mistake: When it comes to building boards, the center of gravity is in Zhuhai. Five of Multek's eight factories are here, employing 5,500 of the company's 7,000 total workers.
What are Multek China's technical capabilities, its R&D investments, its biggest achievement-and biggest headache? These are just a few of the questions we put to the company's top management. CircuiTree learned that Multek China has much method to its madness; by building capacity, it is pushing its product line into new sectors like flexible circuitry, seeking to become an even more important player on the world PCB stage in the months ahead.
Zhuhai Campus: Separate but Equal
Despite its Flextronics pedigree, Multek maintains its own identity. After all, Multek posts its own profit-and-loss numbers, and most of its customers are OEMs. It even maintains two of Flextronics's large EMS competitors: Solectron and Celestica. These facts have caused some financial analysts to speculate that the PCB giant could eventually be "spun out" as a separate entity, with its own public stock offering.
While Multek management didn't care to speculate on that possibility, one thing remains certain: the company's Chinese facilities are a critical component of the company's future...