Will Kulicke & Soffa hold on to its R&D bridgehead in Brainport? A valid question after the company’s announcement that it’s moving the production of its pick-and-place machines to Singapore. With an Eindhoven region focused almost entirely on front-end equipment, the answer isn’t obvious.
At Kulicke & Soffa (K&S) in Eindhoven, 58 jobs will be lost. The parent company is moving machine production to a plant near its headquarters in Singapore. At the Kapelbeemd industrial park, K&S does mostly integration and assembly, activities that aren’t capital-intensive, so relatively easy to relocate. The Dutch newspaper Eindhovens Dagblad brought the news a few weeks ago, with Hans Wijers of the FNV labor union setting the tone: “The complete production is disappearing. How long will the company keep research and development activities in Eindhoven?” he added menacingly.
A top player in the back-end industry moving its production to Asia should come as no surprise at a time when even ASML is relocating more and more activities to the East. For high-end parts, you can easily pay many times as much in Europe as in Malaysia or Singapore. Meanwhile, back-end equipment suppliers who want to sell their stuff in Asia have to deal with cut-throat competition and aggressive Chinese newcomers.
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