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Exclusive news story:

Australian hi-tech

manufacturer forced

to sell factory to Singapore j

In a shock move, one of Australia’s most successful smali ^l° delivcr its o^rcJers on timc. Waiking ^e|ec^troⁿics manufacturers and exporters has been forced to ‘ ™^gldl£wUh’ sell all of its factory plant and bulging export order book to an ,he automatic pick-and-placc tnachines entrepreneur in Singapore. Australia has now lost nedrly 70 loading 20,000 electronic components jobs and projected export earnings of over $12 million a year P^{er hoiir}-- plus a very promising centre for true hi-fech manufacturing.    _de^_g°‘_e^ód^nl>_s^,h0'*’_n

and had them madę for it by leading by JIM ROWe    Silicon foundries like TI, SGS, Hitachi,

NEC and.Thomson-CSF. The chips ar-

In February this year, I visited a com- the USA, Singapore and Europę: most rived in wafer form directly from the pany whose business was the design and of the well-known names, in fact.    foundry, and were then bonded directly

manufacture of microprocessor-based The company was very successful, to the firm*s own PC boards using the electronic controllers for domestic appli- and had installed high-capacity auto- very Iktest automatic die bonding and ances — things like irons, toasters, mated production equipment for the la- wire bonding equipment — capable of washing machines, mixers, blenders, test SMD (surface-mounted device) processing 5000 chips per shift. Very coffee makers and so on. The firm’s technology, to achieve the efficiency impressive indeed controllers are used by a majority of the necessary to cotnpete in the world^łs Of course it also had a well-equipped “big name” major appliance makers in mhrkets,. and the throughpiit necessary . laj>, with a staff of highly trained engi-