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During DesignCon 2025, I met with Tony Plemel, senior applications engineer at Flexible Circuit Technologies (FCT), to discussed the company’s growth and expansion opportunities, including its expansion of its inTFlex EMS facility.
In this interview, Tony explains how FCT’s commitment to customer service and focus on communication and responsiveness allow the company to leverage its capabilities for continued expansion.
Marcy LaRont: Tony, good to see you. How is the show going for you?
Tony Plemel: It’s been pretty busy. We've had some great contacts and, I believe, some really strong potential opportunities.
LaRont: What are people wanting to learn from FCT?
Plemel: They want to know what we can supply for them. Today we produce bare boards at our different locations with our FCT Zhuhai location offering great capabilities for flex, rigid-flex, flex heaters, and more. We have made significant investments into our Zhuhai facility including filling it with the leading equipment available that leads to outstanding capabilities. Some current hot topics included flexible circuit catheter technology—HDI, very fine pitch with length, 50-micron trace and space at a meter and a half long. We presently have a number of different designs in production and continue to expand our capabilities and offerings with our flexible circuit catheter related solutions. We continue to grow our flex, rigid-flex, and flexible heater business and further have attained excellent advancement in our HDI offerings. A second hot topic includes our substrate-like PCB (SLP) offerings, where we are making our own proprietary RCC material and able to meet growing needs for multilayer HDI SLPs.
LaRont: That sounds like quite a facility. Can you tell me more about inTFlex?
Plemel: Sure. inTFlex is the electronics manufacturing and contract manufacturing division of Flexible Circuit Technologies. inTFlex is housed in Huizhou, China, at our brand new, state-of-the-art facility with over 900,000 sq/ft. It’s a smart factory, meaning it has a fully automated MES system. With inTFlex brought our plastics molding group, membrane switches, CNC capabilities, and fixtures into one facility. Having FCT and inTFlex together, we can bring a full contract manufacturing solution to our customers to limit the number of suppliers on their supply chain. The exciting thing is that we can still support low to high volumes to support various customers across many industries.
LaRont: That's really exciting. What accounts for that kind of growth?
Plemel: There’s a lot of business to be won. Over the past year, we’ve experienced significant growth, both in business opportunities and in our team. We’ve invested in software, streamlined operations, and increased our staff by 40% to keep up with all the growth, but we are well-positioned to meet rising demand and continue delivering exceptional solutions to our customers.
LaRont: That’s significant.
Plemel: The neat thing about our model is that we're based in Minneapolis. Our U.S. headquarters is responsible for overall design consultation and optimization services and all customer coordination and care; we then work with our FCT Asia team to streamline the process while helping remove language barriers and logistical complexities. This allows for quality products at a cost-effective price All customers are “A” customers, regardless of the size of their project.
LaRont: No customer should ever think they are anything other than an “A” customer.
Plemel: Agree. We don’t care if you're an order of 10,000, 50,000, or 5 million.
LaRont: That says a lot.
Plemel: We will answer the phone for a two-piece order for a university student who needs those boards for a thesis. We'll bid that. We'll give them that attention, hoping that maybe in five years, when they graduate, they will remember us when they’re working for someone like Apple. We pride ourselves on networking, communication, and responsiveness.
LaRont: It sounds like this sort of communication is embedded in FCT’s core values.
Plemel: Exactly, there is nothing better than a happy customer.
LaRont: What is the market growth for flex and rigid-flex circuits? We keep hearing about explosive growth and that there may be capacity issues.
Plemel: A lot of that comes with the technology. Everything now is smaller, faster, and more powerful. Think of electric vehicle batteries, for example. You need to connect those batteries and keep them batteries heated above 32°F for it to recharge. That’s just one example where we are seeing a lot of growth in electronics. We also see growth in wearables.
Nearly all technology needs to get smaller and smaller. For example, in the medical market, catheters are now three and a half meters long but with a 50-micron trace and space. Everything is better: etchers, resist, etc. Now they're vacuumed, they're mist etchers. They might be a little slower, but you can get very fine features without blowing the resist off. Deep into that manufacture, everything's improving.
When you’re looking at your capabilities, and a customer says, “I want a 35-micron trace and space over a 2-foot-by-2-foot panel,” well, let’s hold on. Our engineers work with the designers to ensure they are getting a cost-effective and functional circuit.
LaRont: For the kinds of products that FCT builds and assembles, do you have more direct access to the OEMs and the design team? Standard rigid designers often don’t even know where their fab will be built.
Plemel: No, from my experience our customers usually have their design close to being done by the time we get it. We can help with the print notes, IPC specifications, GD&T, and tolerancing. Our engineers can take that mechanical electrical package and make sure it will form or flex the way it needs to. With our skill set and years of experience, we have high-yield manufacturing, which obviously lowers price and makes for on-time shipments and happy customers.
LaRont: You're able to do the production as well?
Plemel: Yes, we can. We can start with the prototyping MOQ of, say, 25 pieces, and then we get to say, “By the way, we do SMT and assembly. If you get us your BOM, we can quote that. And we can do modular builds all the way to box build and packaging off the shelf.” That full-service, one-stop-shop opportunity sure makes the buyer happy.
LaRont: Thank you for speaking with me, Tony.
Plemel: Thank you, Marcy.
