PhiChem Open House a Success!

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Down again to a department synthesising electronic materials and photoresists, with yellow safelight and exposure units for practical testing. Next door, a unit for solder paste development, again with comprehensive facilities for evaluation and characterisation, including stencil printers and a production-scale reflow oven.

The next floor down was dedicated to cleanrooms, Class 1000 and Class 100, for the preparation of IC packaging materials. We were not allowed in there in our street clothes!

Back to the ground floor, past the company restaurant—with space for 400 people and lunch provided at the company’s expense—and across to the next building to see the pilot plant for resins and coatings. Some pilot plant! It was an extensive array of gleaming resin kettles with the capacity to produce 100-ton batches. Dr. Zhang explained that PhiChem’s principal manufacturing base is located 500 km west of Shanghai in the city of Anqing, and more recently an additional manufacturing plant has been established in Huizhou, near Shenzhen. The Baoshan pilot plant is primarily for pre-production manufacture and packaging of new products and small batches of special materials.

As the tour concluded it was evident to me that PhiChem is now uniquely poised for rapid growth in the China electronic materials markets. Upon conclusion of the tour, Dr. Zhang commented that PhiChem is actively seeking new partnerships and acquisitions with specialty chemical and material companies around the world.

Returning to our bus for the trip back to into Shanghai, we reflected on what a splendid experience it had been to see PhiChem’s new headquarters site, which represented a $40 million investment and had taken five years from concept to completion. Dr. Haiyo Nakahara summed up Dr. Jin Zhang’s far-sightedness and determination, with this simple but meaningful statement: “He had the vision to see it and the guts to do it!”

• < Previous Page