Barbara Rott
STUTTGART, GERMANY—M+W Zander was recently awarded Business Headquarters status by Singapore's Economic Development Board of Investment (EDB), a title given to subsidiaries of foreign companies that the country recognizes as contributors to the development of Singapore's economy.
With more than 200 employees, M+W's Singapore office is its biggest subsidiary in Asia and now, with the recent centralization of power, will have the company's offices in Malaysia and India reporting directly to it.
“We believe that we can service the industry even better since all our activities will be coordinated from within Asia and thus support can be provided within a shorter time,” says Lothar Till, managing director of M+W Zander Singapore. “Our head office will consolidate all our activities in the region and will improve technical and commercial support to all operations of our company in Asia.”
M+W's Singapore office was founded in 1991 with four employees. Last year the company reported that its Singapore branch achieved sales of approximately US $270 million.
“The first time we realized a turnkey project from ground break to hook-up in Asia was in 1994,” says Dr. Binder. “Therefore, Singapore was the key to all the other successful turnkey projects.” In the first half of 2000, M+W landed the contract to build three new fabs: the 300-mm project of Infineon in Dresden, Germany, a 200-mm fab for Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing in Singapore and one in Israel.
At the end of August, Tower Semiconductor announced that it had selected M+W of Stuttgart, Baran Ltd. of Israel, and their co-owned Israeli-based subsidiary Meissner-Baran, to construct Tower's planned new wafer fab in Migdal Haernek, Israel—as turnkey project.
“The size of the wafers-lab cleanroom will be 9,000 square metres. All buildings together will have about 60,000 square metres,” says Dr. Rafi Levin, co-CEO of Tower Semiconductor. He and his company are planning ground break for the foundry in the forth quarter of 2000, installation of the equipment in early 2002, and start of production in the second quarter of 2002.
In related M+W news, the company also announced the formation of E4 Technologies AG, a joint venture between M+W and BMG Engineering AG.
“The term E 4 stands for Engineering of Ecologically and Economically Efficient chip factories and is very important for our key clients in the Asian region,” says Dr. Harald Binder, board member of E4 and executive vice president of M+W Zander.