What's Hot In Taiwan?

We have asked ourselves, what's hot in Taiwan? And to make it short: the answer is definitely not only the weather!

But let me start at the beginning: Our trip took my colleague Torsten Kühn and me via a layover with 2 days of meetings in Hong Kong to Taipei.

It was my first time in Hong Kong for work, Torsten however had lived in the former special administrative zone for several years, during the roaring PCB times! Where he was responsible for the Sales Department at a renowned German tool manufacturer.

To be quite honest, we both felt that Hong Kong was not what we hoped to find. Torsten repeatedly didn't recognize his old neighborhood, streets and shops were empty or to let, hence it didn't live up to his old and fond memories. Me on the other side found that Hong Kong felt like China, and not so special after all.

This year I have already travelled to Taiwan in May and I promised to be back for TPCA show. Coincidentally our visit this time overlapped with a source inspection of the new machine, we announced in another article of mine.

So we joined forces with our partners from SAS Softec GmbH , Christian Schmidt and Dirk Scholze and continued the journey to Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center together.

It was not only my second trip to Taiwan this year but also the second to an industry related fair, after JPCA Show, the Taiwanese counterpart really impressed me. And here is why:

• The exhibition center in which the fair took place was huge, with no pillars and extremely high ceilings - so I felt like I didn't get this well known fatigue after standing and meeting with new faces for hours, that is typical for trade shows!
• The hall was full and the booths looked well designed, big difference to other shows in the industry!
• Many booths were actually organized by agents, in fact the biggest and most crowded areas belonged to WKK (called TKK in Taiwan), Wah Lee, Takewin and the likes. This is something I personally enjoyed seeing, as it correlates with our business model - since Stepan GmbH is also exhibiting at productronica as an agent / distributor.

Three day at this fair passed by quite fast, and the main take away were the following:

1. The market is in its lowest point right now. Intel and other big players are yet to start ordering vast quantities from their suppliers again, hence several big IC-Substrate firms are forecasting a decreased output of as low as 30% from previous years.
2. The geopolitical situation and export bans targeted at China's <10nm semiconductor industry are leading to some very aggressive strategies from Chinese high tech firms. Since there is still a lot of money available, they are investing big in all kind of different fields. Focused for example on IC substrate and high band gap semiconductors such as SiC and GaN. We saw firms that are on an M&A spree, forming rather huge machine maker groups within only a few years of existing, resulting in extraordinary growth and extremely high revenues!
3. Glass substrates is the new buzzword! 英特尔 's announcement to introduce glass substrates to the market within this decade gives hope to some big tool makers that have been suffering the last few months. The question arises, who will be able to satisfy the US behemoth and achieve good results in this field!
4. Miniaturization is a key for technological leadership and equipment makers that can showcase such capabilities are highly sought after and able to ask a premium price for such machines. I believe with our Partner SAS Softec GmbH we are on to exactly that with our wet chemical and metallization tools; the visit to TPCA has once again proven that to me!

Definitely another great business trip to Asia in the books. Thank's to Torsten, Dirk and Christian for the memorable time!

Please feel free to reach out in regards to any of the points made and preferably come by our booth at productronica in B3 / 424 and convince yourself!

Sincerely,

Max