Situated in a new location, CPCA again impresses. But SEMI warns of the threat to China’s growth.

The resonant message voiced the week of the annual CPCA Show came, curiously enough, from the head of a co-located trade show.

Noting that China offers a profound opportunity for growth (something those of us on the PCB side of the equation already know), SEMI president Stanley T. Myers asserted that higher levels of investment and, more specifically, R&D spending increases, are needed to move technology quickly forward.

In their update to SemiCon China in March, SEMI stated their position on IP protection. It is viewed as an ever-increasing issue and without a unified and globally supported position from within China to properly manage and effectively enforce IP protection, the region will not grow as anticipated.

After attending the CPCA Show and a pair of simultaneous events, it’s hard to believe anything can stop China in its tracks. This year marked the 16th for the International Electronic Circuits Exhibition sponsored by CPCA. For the first time it was held at the New International Expo Center, in the Pudong area of Shanghai. Previously, it had been housed in the Shanghai Mart and Intex Shanghai conference center. Everyone I spoke with was pleased with the new exhibit halls. They were comfortable and functional, easily accommodating the move in/out of large or heavy equipment. The site is a bit removed from the hotel cluster, but with taxi costs just a fraction of what we see in the U.S. and Europe, it was an easy decision to take a taxi each day. Some of the larger show hotels also ran buses for guests.

With slightly smaller footprint than the previous year, the 2007 show covered over 24,000 sq. meters. (The 2006 incarnation was billed at 30,000 sq. meters.) More than 500 exhibitors spanned three halls. Attendance was good by any standards. The show floor overflowed on the first day. Exhibitors observed that Wednesday’s attendance was doubly positive: high body count and high caliber attendees. Company management was out in full force on Wednesday visiting targeted exhibitors.

On Friday – the last day of the show – the crowds had noticeably vacated the premises. There was, however, a good representation of local shops, evident by their company jackets. Many exhibitors started packing up early Friday afternoon as traffic dwindled after lunch. Many CPCA attendees also used Friday to walk the halls of the two adjacent electronics shows that were co-located at the New International Expo Center.

The total numbers as reported by the show organizers are listed below.

The CPCA Show had many of the usual and anticipated exhibitors. Obviously, with over 500 exhibits, it’s hard to mention everyone. Instead of trying to list exhibitors here, I direct you to pcdandm.com/cms/cpca2007_exhibitors where we have published the exhibitor listings from the show guide. You might notice the listings are alphabetical by Chinese name. So if a company did not list a Chinese name (UP Media Group did not) it was listed by the English name at the front of the book. There was no secondary index that sorted companies by function or by product specialty, making it hard to find what you are looking for without doing quite a bit of reading.

If you haven’t been to CPCA, it’s worth the trip. Many of the exhibits are similar to what you have likely seen at Nepcon, Expo/Apex or Productronica, but the diversity and level of vertical product integration presented under one roof is quite a bit different than what is seen at shows in other regions. There were, of course, many familiar equipment vendors such as Höllmüller (hms-germany.de), Chemcut (chemcut.net), March Plasma (marchplasma.com), C.A. Picard (capicard.de), ME Baker (represented by WKK), (mebaker.com) and (wkkintl.com), Teknek (teknek.com), Schmoll (schmoll-asia.com), Camtek (camtek.co.il), LPKF (LPKF.com), OEM Press Systems (oempresssystems.com), Mania Technologie AG (maniagroup.com), and Hitachi Via Mechanics (hitachi-via.co.jp). There were even more local equipment manufacturers. They spanned the manufacturing process, from a newer company Beijung Haoyuetian Power Tech Co. (sopway.com), which makes PCB plating rectifiers to PENC (penc.com), an established Hong Kong-based supplier of plating lines for various PCB processes now manufacturing in mainland China.

As expected, equipment manufacturers and equipment consumables from drill bits and spindle repair companies to registration and tooling equipment dominated the show floor. Over half the exhibits featured equipment. More than 50 chemicals/process consumable companies were on hand, and more than 25 trading companies or distributors present also represented process consumable products. It was not unusual to walk from one hall to the next and see the same products, in some cases even sporting the same literature, being sold by another company. A few companies were notably missing including Rohm & Haas (rohmhaas.com), which took a prominent booth in the SemiCon China hall and a large billboard at the show entrance to announce their location.

The biggest surprise for me was the cross-section of available products shown. There were three companies I saw selling fiberglass cloth in 7628, 2116, 1080 and other popular weaves. Two of these companies were strictly fiberglass suppliers. ShanXi HuaTek Fiberglass (huatek.cn) had a range of cloth styles available, as did Zhuhai Gowin Fiberglass (gowinfibreglass.com). Both of these companies appeared to be exhibiting at CPCA to reach the laminate manufacturers exhibiting beside them. A few PCB fabricators in the region have made a serious commitment to vertical integration, like Nan Ya in Kunshan (nanyapcb.com.tw), but it has taken it to the zenith of integration, manufacturing its own glass yard from silica as well as weaving its own fabrics.

In the same vein were numbers of smaller booths where companies that made plastic containers for chemicals or pressurized storage vessels for chemical reactions were seemingly hoping to capture the captive exhibitors. If it had something to do with PCB manufacturing, from clean room gear to precision angular contact ball bearings, you could find it on the show floor. From plastic materials to manufactured plating tanks to the copper wire bails used to make high purity copper sulfate for copper foil manufacturing, it was represented. More than new products or killer apps, what struck me over the three days was the difference in philosophy at how they approached the show and the depth of vertical integration in the exhibitor mix.

It was interesting to have two additional large electronics industry exhibitions overlapping the CPCA dates and at the same location. The first, Electronica and ProductronicaChina was organized by PCIM Mesago and MMI Messe Muenchen in cooperation with local organizations CEAC and CEIEC. It is the sixth year for this exhibition, bringing the renowned Munich Trade Fair to Shanghai.

In addition to the exhibits there was a conference that opened with a China Electronics Summit. The purpose was to bring together leading multinational electronics companies active in the Chinese market. Speakers included Fairchild, Tyco and Infineon. The focus topic was energy efficiency (read: EuP). Later in the week was a two-day symposium on trends and future requirements in automotive electronics.

There were about 350 exhibitors at Electronica and ProductronicaChina. The product categories ranged from sensors to relays and switches and from motors to microwave technology and opto electronics. There was a good cross-section of multinationals – 3M China, Dow Corning, Fairchild, LPKF Laser & Electronics, Methode, Rogers and Tyco – mixed with regional companies.

The second electronics event was SemiCon China. Even by CPCA standards, SemiCon China is huge. There were nearly 2,000 exhibitors. I spent a few hours walking the halls after lunch in Friday, not close to enough time to do the show justice in review. (It was at SemiCon China that Hwang delivered his comments.)

All in all, with nearly 3,000 exhibitors available during the week, the result was information overload. I will feature a few gems over the next few months in various venues, either in the magazine or on the web. As PCD&M columnist Peter Biglow has mentioned of late, there is a lot to be learned from an objective review of what is happening outside your sphere of influence. I encourage readers to take the time to make comparisons about how you conduct your business and how our neighbors around the world conduct theirs. You might be surprised at the value afforded by incorporating a new idea here and there. PCD&M

Kathy Nargi-Toth is editor of PCD&M.

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