Aismalibar on Markets, Materials, and the Increase in Copper Prices

Estimated reading time: 15 minutes

Starkey: Do you do most of your selling to the fabricator level or do you normally talk at a higher level, say, to the OEM designers and determine what their requirements are and how you can fulfill their requirements and then get your material engineered into the product?

Benmayor: That is the goal of us being in this show. We are mainly approaching OEMs at this show and through the OEMs and their engineering platforms we go down to the scale of the PCB manufacturers. We need to show our technologies and our advantages to the OEMs so we can implement a different type of engineering on their drawings and from this point drive it down into the light manufacturers and from the light manufacturers down into the PCB producers.

Starkey: As an exhibition and a show, is electronica the opportunity to meet the people that you want to meet at that level?

Benmayor: Yes. To approach the big OEMs is a difficult task because they are such big corporations and you need to find the right people, but in these kinds of shows we are able to detect the right engineering department. From this starting point we are able to go through their organization to the right people and make the presentations for the right engineering departments.

Matties: What sort of problems do your customers come to you and say, "How can you help us?" What is the greatest challenge?

Benmayor: Today it depends on the sector. If we go to the automotive industry, the challenge is always thermal management and how to dissipate the temperature faster and in a more effective way. If we go to the power model, power train, then we see also the thermal management case but combined with high dielectric strength. That is a key factor for them because they normally use high voltage or require high insulation in between the functional areas and the heat sinks to guarantee the functionality on street lights, for example, or high power modules where the current is very high.

Matties: Do you do a lot of business in the LED market and metal-back type of boards?

Benmayor: We do. The core business produced in our plant in Barcelona is metal-backed boards. We see two different levels and we think that the market is being divided into the low end IMS boards, where low thermal dissipation is required and simple laminate can be used, and very demanding customers that need perfection inside the IMS. They need fast dissipation and they need what we call 100% guaranteed insulation in between the functional copper and aluminum, a key factor in this kind of material.Aimalibar is the only IMS supplier that guaranties a high pot test to all the laminates we deliver.

Matties: What about pricing? When the automotive companies come in, obviously, price is an issue, but it seems to me that they are willing to spend more to get what they need. Do you see that as the case or do they still just beat you up on price?

Benmayor: For the automotive industry I always say that first you need to beat the technology. You need to gain the attraction of the automotive guys with your technology and once they are really happy with the technology or what they are seeing  then you start to have an opportunity but as always this ends on a price discussion. If you are able to offer them, technology-wise, a solution that really fits into their engineering development and price-wise it’s acceptable, they normaly move ahead.,

Matties: How are the market conditions in Barcelona?

Benmayor: Spain is a small country in the electronic area. There are no really big players in the electronics area itself, but we have big OEMs and big car manufacturers like SEAT, Ford, and Renault. They all have plants located in Barcelona and some of their R&D centers are also there. We have big OEM players in Spain related to big industry, but in electronics itself there is no a big industry compared to Germany, for example.

Matties: Is all your manufacturing done in Barcelona?

Benmayor: We do a part in Barcelona and a part in Taiwan. The high-end products are always made in our plant in Barcelona.

Matties: How is the Asian market?

Benmayor: The Asian market is very price-driven. The volumes are very big there and they are concentrated on low-end engineering and mass production. We are not really focused on the Chinese market, but we have both an office in Taiwan and in China capable to serve our OEMs worldwide. But we are not approaching the Chinese OEMs or the big electronic manufacturers directly in China.

Matties: Do you see a day when you will, or what stops you from doing that? Is there no money in it?

Benmayor: It is very difficult to work in China. Big organizations, much bigger than our organization, have failed when going to China and you see a lot of stories about the failures of many big players going there. We know the Chinese market because we have been involved with them for many years, especially in the FR4 area, but we don't see how to invest our money in a market such as China because the competition there is very  strong and mainly price-driven. The way to manage a Chinese company is very complex and we do not have enough human resources  to send our technical staff into China to develop engineering or a new facility. We really don't see the business behind it.

Matties: And in North America, how is your business?

Benmayor: We are growing steadily. Every year our growth has been nice in North America.

Matties: You are working with Jeff Brandman?

Benmayor: Yes, Jeff is our general manager in the North American office. He is doing a great job there. We are now having a lot of communication with the automotive industry and we have got a couple of very big projects there together with Ford. We are already at quite an advanced stage of the project.

Matties: How many employees do you have?

Benmayor: We have 100, so we’re medium-sized.

Matties: That’s a nice size, comfortable. What sort of growth curve do you have?

Benmayor: We see the company growing, with a nice growth in automotive together with a new product range used as thermal pads with high dielectric requirements  and low thermal resistance.

Matties: What about copper pricing? There is a lot of talk about how it is going up, up, up.

Benmayor: The copper price looks like that because the Chinese government made that announcement that they want lots of vehicles made with batteries before a certain year. Based on this, all the copper manufacturers have moved a big part of their capacity into the battery sector, which has less technical requirements than the copper for laminate.  Business is business. They prefer to invest in that sector and to have a nicer margin than in the traditional copper foil for electronics, so if you want the electronic copper foil you have to pay the new price.Page 2 of 3

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