LONDON — The management team of distributor BFi OPTiLAS has completed a buy out of the company which has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Avnet Corp for over 10 years following the acquisition of BFI Ibexsa in 1995 and its subsequent merger with Optilas in 1998.

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It has operated as a completely autonomous organization within Avnet's European Electronics Marketing Group.
BFi OPTiLAS's management team engaged independent private equity firm, Activa Capital, in order to acquire a majority stake in the company. Activa Capital manages over €185million Euros of investments. Avnet will retain a minority stake in the company.
BFi OPTiLAS will continue to expand its operation as a pan European distributor of products and services for the electronic and photonic market places. The company focuses on niche technology products such as magnetic materials, lasers, sensors, connectors, electro-optics, imaging, fibre optics, RF and microwave components, systems and assemblies. The company operates from 12 offices throughout Europe, employing 300 staff.

elcoElektronikai Kft, an Austrian owned EMS-provider based in Hungary, is constructing a new plant in Liska, Hungary.
May 09, 2006 07:59 (evertiq)
SelcoElektronikai Kft is making an investment worth 500.000 Euro in which the company will build a 2,200-sqm manufacturing plant in Ajka, Hungary.

Selco Elektronikai Kft. Was founded in 2004 by Seidel Holding GmbH and Mr. Andreas Liska.

The aim of the company is, on one hand, to support the Joint-Venture partner in projects with high pricing pressure with economic production, and on the other hand to develop an aspiring and independent enterprise in Ajka which offers its services to customers in German-speaking countries and in the new EU member states.

Die Seidel group - especially Seidel Elektronik GmbH Nfg. KG with its headquarters in Deutschlandsberg, Austria - has developed from a classical contract manufacturer to a supplier of electronic and mechatronic systems.

Seidel Elektronik is one of the market leaders among independent contract manufacturers in Austria and is pursuing the expansion of its market with the help of the Joint Venture.

The holding company of the largest distributor of electronic components in Central Europe, Spoerle Electronic GmbH, has a new name.
May 02, 2006 16:33 (evertiq)
The group of companies is now registered with the Commercial Registry under the name "Arrow Central Europe GmbH". This step is a move taken within the Arrow Group to create a more open and transparent internal structure.

The name is new, but everything else remains the same!" reassures Heinz-Walter Wiegand, General Manager of Arrow Central Europe GmbH. „SPOERLE, now as a division of Arrow Central Europe, has, for 39 years, stood for competence and know-how in the electronics processing industry in Germany and played a leading role in building and shaping distribition to become the business it is today."

La société de réparation A Novo (4500 personnes, 282 millions d'euros de chiffre d'affaires) vient d'acquérir Engström Telecom (8 millions d'euros de CA), réparateur de téléphones portables et société de logistique opérant en Suède. Avec entre 275 000 et 300 000 interventions par an, Engström Telecom détiendrait près de 45% du marché suédois de la réparation de téléphones portables. La société s'appuie sur un réseau de 540 points de vente. Pour financer cette acquisition ainsi que le rachat (en cours de finalisation) d'un réparateur allemand d'écrans plats et d'équipements informatiques, A Novo vient d'émettre 10 millions d'actions nouvelles pour un montant net de 7,8 millions d'euros.

LONDON — 2001 Electronic Components has extended its European activities into Finland with its parent company, Torst Holdings, acquiring a majority stake in Fintronic Oy based in Helsinki.
Fintronic was founded in 1974 and is a design led sales operation with a strong line up of suppliers headed by Linear Technology. Most of the sales team are degree qualified electronics engineers.
"The new structure of Fintronic under the Torst umbrella has allowed us to increase our investment with our suppliers and partners utilising upgraded systems, broader products profile and additional staff," said Janne Vasama, managing director of Fintronic. "We are also expanding our operations in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia which is already yielding some very promising opportunities and our Russian sales activity is, unsurprisingly, developing some extremely significant market opportunities."

MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 24, 2006--Solectron Corporation (NYSE:SLR), a leading provider of electronics manufacturing and integrated supply chain services, today announced the successful certification for the Solectron Bordeaux plant in France to EN 9100:2003 (equivalent to AS 9100 Rev B) standards. This quality management system is specific to the aerospace industry for its design, new product introduction, manufacturing and test activities

L'an passé, le sous-traitant français Cofidur a réalisé un chiffre d'affaires de 81,7 millions d'euros en baisse de 5% par rapport à 2004. Le résultat net part du groupe est tombé à 0,297 million d'euros, contre 1,923 million en 2004 en partie à cause d'une charge de personnel exceptionnelle de 800 000 euros. Par contre, au 1er trimestre 2006, les ventes de Cofidur ont progressé de 10,8% par rapport à la même période de 2005, à 25,7 millions d'euros. Cette croissance serait en grande partie la résultante de l'activité de Laval dans le secteur aéronautique. En fin d'année dernière, Cofidur a en effet racheté Flextronics Laval et a repris 93 personnes du site. Le sous-traitant y a constitué un pôle dédié à l'aéronautique, au militaire et à l'industriel, pôle fort de 250 personnes.
Le conseil d’administration de COFIDUR, réuni sous la présidence de M. H.TRANDUC
le 20 Avril 2006 a arrêté les comptes consolidés et sociaux de l’exercice clos le 31/12/2005, dont il ressort les éléments suivants:
La société COFIDUR S.A. a réalisé en 2005 un chiffre d'affaires de 2 517 K€ et généré un résultat net de 1 058 K€.

Le Chiffre d’affaires consolidé à 81,7 M€ est en repli de près de 5% par rapport à un exercice 2004 qui avait été particulièrement soutenu. Cette baisse, principalement due à des affaires moins consommatrices en composants achetés, n’a pratiquement pas eu d’incidence sur le résultat opérationnel courant.

Elcoteq SE's personnel negotiations that were started in the beginning of March have been concluded. The negotiations concerned the personnel at the Lohja manufacturing plant, the company's product development unit and the NPI (new product introduction) unit in Finland. As a result of the negotiations altogether 65 employment contracts will be terminated and 15 persons will be temporarily laid-off on production or financial grounds. At the start of the negotiations, the company estimated that the possible actions would affect at most approximately 120 people.

With these measures the company aims to assure the long-term competitiveness and profitability of the units. The terminations of work contracts do not create any significant one-time costs.

Elcoteq currently employs roughly 20,000 employees worldwide, approximately 870 of whom work in the company's units in Finland.

FCI has named Abacus "Design-in Distributor of the Year" following a year in which the Distributor also showed continuous sales growth and achieved the No 1 sales position in FCI 's Distribution Network.
May 09, 2006 09:37 (evertiq)
"The Abacus Group has demonstrated exceptional focus on developing and growing their business with FCI through identifying and meeting customer application requirements for connectors" commented Gavin Darling, Distribution Manager for FCI. "The Abacus Group's dedication to technical support and exceptional customer service has meant that together we have worked closely with customers to enable them to benefit fully from our innovative technologies"

Nick Leppard, Emech Specialist, at Abacus Polar added, "We have had a close and exceptionally positive

Jahnichen a signé un accord avec la société italienne AsiaTronix, importateur de composants de protection fabriqués en Asie, pour la distribution en France de tels composants. Les fabricants sont basés en Chine, à Taiwan et au Japon. Ils produisent des composants de protection contre les surintensités, les surtensions et les élévations de température. Créée en juillet 2005, AsiaTronix dispose d'un stock central à Milan, s'appuie aujourd'hui sur un réseau de 10 distributeurs et 2 agents, et couvre 20 pays européens.

Mrs. Dr. Monika Reintjes has been named new Managing Director for Solectron Germany GmbH. Solectron Germany's previous Managing Director, Dr. Thomas Maile, will change his role to be Manager for Solectron in Budapest, Hungary.
May 09, 2006 15:58 (Elektronik Praxis)
In her new position Mrs. Dr. Reintjes is responsible for the overall business in Germany. Dr. Reintjes has been with Solectron since January 2000. She has held a number of management positions within the company. Dr. Reintjes reports to Hamid Halfaoui, senior Vice President Solectron EMEA.

LONDON — Abacus Group has set up an Embedded Systems Group as a group-wide, pan-European centre of excellence to support customers in the development of embedded computing solutions based around Microsoft Embedded operating systems.
The group, which is focussed specifically on the retail, gaming, industrial automation and hospitality sectors, will work with customers in the U.K., Scandinavia, Benelux and Italy and provide a local single point of contact in their local market that unites the display and embedded computing expertise of Trident, the wireless communication technology of recently-acquired TDC and the Microsoft knowledge of Abacus Polar’s team.

Conformément aux anticipations formulées par le groupe Dane-Elec début mars, l'activité du 1er trimestre a été ralentie par une baisse significative du prix des mémoires Flash et a ainsi créé un phénomène d'attente chez les grands donneurs d'ordres, notamment aux Etats-Unis.Malgré ce contexte perturbé, l'activité Flash de Dane-Elec a enregistré sur cette période une croissance de 22 % et a représenté 65 % des ventes. L'activité DRAM a connu une baisse sur le trimestre de 59 % de son chiffre d'affaires, comparable à celle enregistrée au cours des trois trimestres précédents. Pour mémoire, l'activité DRAM au 1er trimestre 2005 avait été particulièrement élevée et constitue ainsi une base de comparaison défavorable.Enfin, le repositionnement depuis plusieurs trimestres d'Intervalle, l'activité de grossiste en France, semble porter ses fruits avec une croissance des ventes de 21 %.Au total, le groupe a ainsi réalisé un chiffre d'affaires de 47,9 M€ en recul de 13 % .Par zone géographique, l'Europe a connu une baisse limitée de ses ventes de - 1,8 %, les Etats-Unis - 24,7 % et l'Asie - 41,1 %.

Arrow Electronics has been awarded the franchise to supply NKK Nikkai's complete range of switches across northern Europe.
May 09, 2006 15:47 (evertiq)
The agreement extends an already highly successful relationship between Arrow and NKK Switches in North America and elsewhere in Europe.

Arrow will address a wide range of markets with NKK's families of pushbutton, toggle, rocker, slide and tactile switches, both in standard and illuminated versions. Initial targets will include audio/video, broadcast, telecom, communications, medical, military and aerospace sectors. Training has been completed for Arrow's staff who can now offer access to over 80 product families with over 4 million switch combinations.

The two companies will leverage their complementary strengths to provide high-performing and cost-effective integrated antenna solutions.

"Flextronics is a global leader in electronic manufacturing services with a network of facilities in over 30 countries on five continents," stated Greg McCray, Chief Executive Officer of Antenova. "Flextronics' model of vertically integrating design, engineering and manufacturing resources with component offerings is the ideal approach to implementing the antenna early in the design cycle and achieving the maximum benefits from our HDA™ antenna technology. The small size, high efficiency and superior detuning characteristics of Antenova's HDA™ technology make it the optimal solution for high volume handset development and allows Flextronics

LONDON — Oxford Semiconductor has appointed ActiveComp GmbH as its representative agent in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The company will support Oxford’s complete range of USB interface ICs, serial communication bridges, FireWire and USB storage ICs and FireWire audio controllers.

Norway's largest EMS-provider Kitron's operating revenue during this years first quarter amounted to NOK 433.1 million (NOK 379.9 million). The growth in sales, together with the cost reductions following the reorganisation in the Norwegian electronic manufacturing services (EMS) business, has produced profit before tax of NOK 16.1 million.
May 11, 2006 10:36 (evertiq)
Kitron's operating revenue increased by 14.0 per cent compared to the first quarter 2005 Turnover in the Norwegian EMS operation, Kitron AS, represented 59.8 per cent of the group's turnover during the first quarter. The Swedish EMS operation, Kitron AB, provided 16.8 per cent of Kitron's turnover. Kitron Lithuania represented 8.6 per cent of the group's turnover in the first quarter. In total the EMS operation provided 84.0 per cent of turnover in the first quarter whereas during the same period last year it represented 88.2 per cent of Kitron's turnover.

Kitron Microelectronics provided 16.0 per cent of the group's turnover in the first quarter against 11.8 per cent for the same period last year. The increase is partly a result of higher volumes to established customers in the Norwegian part of the business as well as new sales to customers, particularly in the Swedish operation.

Sanmina-SCI shed 20 workers at its Enclosure plant in Forserum, Sweden.
May 10, 2006 19:02 (evertiq)
The Forserum local management is expecting a slow down in orders and higher costs for the plant this coming autumn.

Sources tell evertiq that Sanmina-SCI is doing very well in their other two plants in Sweden.

Foxconn today closed its staff negotiations in Finland that started in March. 295 employees will lose their jobs.

Some of the employees in Finland have agreed on moving to other of Foxconns plants abroad. Therefore the number of redundancies was lower than expected. Initially 400 jobs were planned to be removed. That number has now been adjusted to 295. The reason why Foxconn needed to reduce its staff in Finland was because a large part of the European mobile phone industry has transferred operations to Asia

The Swedish EMS provider NOTE reported strong sales and results turned to profit for its first quarter 2006.
April 26, 2006 11:34 (evertiq)
by: Jesper Olsson
The smaller sized Swedish EMS providers have during the last year reported tremendous results and now it seems like the larger ones is back in the game to. NOTE´s sales for its first quarter rose by 22.6% to reach 43 MEUR and the company´s result landed on a profit of about 1.3 MEUR which can be compared to the loss of nearly 5 MEUR for the same period last year.

Swedish EMS provider PartnerTech almost doubled its profit for its first quarter 2006. PartnerTech´s net turnover increased 35.9 percent to reach 69 MEUR and gave a profit of 2.33 MEUR after taxes.
April 26, 2006 16:39 (evertiq)
by: Jesper Olsson
PartnerTech´s international sales grew to reach 40 percent of the company´s total revenue which is a significant increase from last year´s 17 percent of total sales. PartnerTech saw a growth in all of the company´s business units but especially within medical that grew 105.4 percent from the last year. The largest increase was shown in the "Terminals/Machine Solutions" that in value grew by almost 15 MEUR.
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German based supplier of Components, ZEGO Aktiengesellschaft (formerly known as ACG Advanced Component Group AG), announced that its Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Stephen Griffiths, will leave the company at the end of the month.
May 11, 2006 15:23 (evertiq)
Mr. Griffiths started working for AZEGO in 2002, since 1.11.2002 he has been Board Member (CFO). In the last three years he successfully pursued and implemented strict cost-saving measures. These included a significant reduction of the operating and head-office function expenses, the divestiture of unprofitable subsidiaries in Germany and abroad, and a major rationalization of the group with the dismantling of the former holding-structure.
To finalize some of these restructuring measures and to prepare the 2005 financial statements, Mr. Griffiths had accepted the Supervisory Board's request for a temporary extension of his contract which originally ended on December 31st, 2005.
The Supervisory Board and the Board of Directors thank Mr. Griffiths for his successful work during the last years.

In a further measure to rationalize expense- and management structures, the company's Supervisory Board intends to reduce the number of Board Members. A direct replacement for the Board position of Mr. Griffiths will therefore not be made. Until the necessary change in the company's statutes can be adopted at the company's Annual General Meeting in late July, the Supervisory Board will appoint a temporary member of the Board.

Kimball Electronics Group, Inc., through its related subsidiaries, announced today that the Company has entered into an agreement with Magna Donnelly to produce printed circuit board assemblies. Kimball Electronics Group, Inc., a subsidiary of Kimball International, Inc., is a global contract electronics manufacturing services (EMS) company that specializes in durable electronics with applications in the automotive, medical, industrial controls, and public safety industries.
Under the terms of the agreement, Kimball Electronics acquired Magna Donnelly's PCB (Printed Circuit Board) assembly operation in Longford, Ireland. The two companies have agreed to combine their efforts in a long term manufacturing strategy to support the needs of the Magna Donnelly automotive mirror business.

The Swedish java chip developer Imsys Technologies AB has entered a distribution agreement with 2001 Electronics for Ireland and U.K.
May 03, 2006 05:05 (Elektronik i Norden)
by: Jesper Olsson
Imsys is a Swedish fabless java chip developer developing microprocessors, modules, development kits and development tools. Their products are built on their own embedded java platform for machine-to-machine m2m communication.