ESCATEC Boosts Design Services Offering in Europe in New Partnership with Croatia’s Byte Lab

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Fast growing, integrated electronics manufacturing services (EMS) specialist, ESCATEC, fresh from posting a record fiscal year in 2021, today announced a new partnership with noted, Zagreb-based, electronics design house, Byte Lab.

The deal enables ESCATEC to offer cost-effective product development, design, and prototyping services, in Europe, while Byte Lab will be able to offer its customers that need mass manufacturing services access to ESCATEC’s portfolio of highly competitive manufacturing locations in Malaysia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, and the United States.

Both parties foresee the partnership producing concrete results quickly, noted Charles-Alexandre Albin, ESCATEC’s Director of Strategic Development.

“This partnership arose out of ESCATEC’s commitment and core value to always serve the best interests of our customers, and some customers have been indicating a desire to further control costs by shifting some product requirements closer to them in Europe,” said Albin. In Byte Lab’s case, some of its customers would like to scale up in a big way which would require their products to be manufactured across a geographically diverse production footprint.

“We see this as a very significant development as Byte Lab, in essence, becomes an extension of ESCATEC’s workbench, while ESCATEC becomes the exclusive, mass manufacturing partner for Byte Lab,” stated Albin. He noted that several ESCATEC customers have expressed their support for the partnership and that Byte Lab has already started channeling business to ESCATEC.

“Our international Business Development team is delighted with this new partnership and are reporting a lot of interest from the market,” he said.

This new partnership represents another step in ESCATEC’s ongoing strategic plan to grow into a major player in the global EMS industry. In May 2021, it acquired UK-based JJS Manufacturing, which brought in highly valued capabilities in large format electro-mechanical assembly and production facilities in the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic. ESCATEC also has a long-standing cooperation agreement with Connecticut-based SMT Corp. that gives it a presence in the North American market.

Taking this new partnership with Byte Lab into account, the ESCATEC “family” now comprises Design & Development (D&D) centres in Heerbrugg (Switzerland) and Zagreb (Croatia), and a production footprint encompassing multiple modern manufacturing facilities and highly skilled workforce in Penang and Johor Bahru (Malaysia), Heerbrugg, Lutterworth (United Kingdom), Chomutov (Czech Republic), and Wisconsin (United States).

Established in 1974, Swiss-owned and Penang-headquartered ESCATEC offers a fully integrated A-to-Z of electronics and box build manufacturing services – from D&D, prototyping, product certification, to mass volume production and after-sales services – to a global customer base of major OEM brands. Group revenue in 2021 exceeded US$300 million and is projected to grow strongly again this year.