Strengthening the Cicor Group's global competitiveness

Cicor has announced two strategic measures aimed at promoting new technologies and sustainable economic development.

The first is the opening of a technology centre for printed electronics in Bronschhofen. New innovative additive manufacturing technology enables the production of sophisticated printed circuit boards with integrated electronics and supports the advancing miniaturisation of the devices.

In the first quarter of 2019, the Cicor Group will open this technology centre and will invest around CHF 1.5 million in further expansion over the next two years. Within the technology centre, a team of application engineers will take care of application development.

The increasing number of electronic devices in more and more applications requires new manufacturing technologies to be developed and industrialised. Flexible additive manufacturing processes play a key role in substrate manufacturing and connection technology.

The unique printing technology used enables a wide range of conductive, non-conductive and biocompatible materials to be printed on a wide range of substrates and forms. In addition, new opportunities exist for interconnect technologies that can lead to performance improvements and cost optimisation.

The integration of the circuits into three-dimensional surfaces often eliminates the need to use an additional substrate. Compared to the methods used today to produce such three-dimensional circuit carriers, the technology chosen by Cicor offers a significantly wider variety of printed and printable materials. Devices for medical, aerospace and IoT applications can be reduced in size by using this technology.

With the opening of a technology centre for printed electronics in Bronschhofen, Cicor is underlining its ambition to become the technology leader and its claim to be able to offer customers new, innovative solutions in addition to proven technologies.

The second strategic method will be launching at the beginning of 2019, when the Cicor Group's plastic injection molding activities in Singapore will be merged with the molding activities in Batam, Indonesia. The consolidation of the molding activities at the Batam site means a further simplification of the operational structures, an expansion of its service portfolio and additional efficiency gains through economies of scale. 

This consolidation will not only aim to provide a solid starting point for mastering future challenges in the technically demanding plastic injection molding business, but the Batam production site will also be upgraded to a reported ‘best-in-class’ production for high-precision components including coating. Batam already produces various components and in particular sterile medical products under clean room conditions. 

The competence centre for the construction of complex tools and molds for the processing of thermoplastics shall remain in Singapore. With the purchase of a new die-sinking EDM machine in the summer of 2018, the manufacturing capabilities of the competence centre have been further enhanced in terms of workpiece precision, surface quality, cutting speed and process reliability. Cicor's customers will continue to benefit from the many years of experience of Cicor's designers and qualified polymechanics in tooling and plastics technologies from a central location in Singapore.