Mega merger creates new landscape for critical materials transport technology

04/01/2005

BY STEVE SMITH

CHASKA, MN-In less than a month, molecular contamination removal company Extraction Systems (Franklin, Mass.) went from being a small, independent company to being acquired by semiconductor subsystems supplier Mykrolis Corp., only to have both merged with critical materials management developer Entegris Inc.

The rapid-fire merger, announced in mid-March, combines three of the industry’s leading contamination-control developers into one combined company to be known as Entegris (www.entegris.com).

Billed as a “merger of equals” transaction, the consolidation is seen as bringing together leading contamination-control enterprises that serve the entire semiconductor industry with products and services having little overlap. The combined Extraction/Mykrolis/Entegris technologies will provide products and services designed to purify, protect and transport critical materials used in semiconductor and microelectronics manufacturing.

Mykrolis CEO Gideon Argo will become leader of the new company and will continue to operate from corporate offices in Billerica, Mass., even though company headquarters will be at the Entegris facility in Chaska, Minn. Entegris CEO James Dauwalter will serve as non-executive chairman of the board of directors. The remainder of the company’s management team will consist of senior executives from Entegris and Mykrolis.

The merger is seen, in part, as a strategy to meet overseas growth opportunities in the semiconductor industry. “Semiconductors and microelectronics are increasingly global industries of scale,” says Dauwalter, “with particularly rapid growth in Asia. We share the view that the companies serving these customers must be global, Asia-focused, and of scale as well.”

Dauwalter adds that the new Entegris will help its combined customer base to “purify, protect and transport the semiconductor and microelectronic components and devices they offer as quickly, cost-effectively, and profitably as possible.”

As for the addition of Extraction Systems to the new Entegris, Mykrolis president and COO Jean-Marc Pandraud says that the company’s products that are used to measure and remove airborne molecular contaminants from semiconductor processes fit well with Mykrolis’s gas microcontamination control technology, “and will increase our product and technology offering in lithography.”

Extraction Systems President Devon Kinkead sees the acquisition as a means of accelerating hopes of expanding service to direct customers in Japan, and end-user customers in Asia. “We have also gained immediate access to water purification competencies critical to service the needs of our lithography customers as they extend their 193-nm optical platforms using immersion techniques.”

Completion of the merger is subject to the approval of Mykrolis and Entegris shareholders. III