Kulicke & Soffa closes Assembléon book

The approval of a strategic plan to cease operations of the company’s electronics assembly equipment business appears to be the final curtain for Kulicke & Soffa’s development efforts in Eindhoven. Last September, K&S announced that it was moving the production of its pick-and-place machines to a plant near its headquarters in Singapore, thereby axing 58 Eindhoven jobs. The remaining R&D team got the preliminary green light, with no guarantees. Now, it looks like the end of the road for them as well.

At the time of the September reorganization, K&S in Eindhoven was doing research and development for three product families: the iFlex machines for placing electronic components on PCBs, the Pixalux and Luminex equipment for placing mini and micro LEDs and the Liteq steppers for back-end lithography. The latter were sold to Onto Innovation in November. According to the new strategic plan approved by the board of directors, the loss-making electronics assembly equipment activities are to be wound down “in an effort to prioritize core semiconductor assembly business opportunities and enhance overall through-cycle financial performance.”

The decision follows a comprehensive business evaluation of the financial performance and pace of new product development of the electronics assembly equipment activities. The cessation is subject to a consultation process with the applicable works council and union representatives, which K&S intends to initiate in its third fiscal quarter of 2025. The company expects to complete most of the wind-down in the first half of fiscal 2026. Meanwhile, it will continue to focus its development resources on other opportunities supporting technology changes within the thermo-compression, vertical fan-out, automotive and advanced dispense markets.

The iFlex pick-and-place systems have their origins at Assembléon, the Philips subsidiary K&S acquired in 2014 for 98 million dollars. A new generation of the equipment was in the making, but the industrialization got stalled. In September, a spokesperson stressed that the company was still “very committed” to developing and bringing the next generation of SMT systems online. “We have a very detailed review process for development and there were essential reasons why this development program was delayed. It hasn’t been stopped.” Not yet.