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38 The PCB Design Magazine • April 2017 FEATURE INTERVIEW Steve Robinson Discusses APCT's Tenfold Expansion by Andy Shaughnessy Steve Robinson, CEO of APCT, a PCB fabri- cator in Silicon Valley, has lead the company to impressive growth since he acquired it nearly 10 years ago. I ran into Steve at DesignCon 2017, and we sat down to discuss the company's re- markable transformation and his focus on work- ing with PCB designers and engineers to create advanced, high-speed PCBs. Andy Shaughnessy: Steve, it's good to finally meet you and put a face to the name. Why don't you start off and give us some background about APCT? Steve Robinson: I've spent 46 years in the print- ed circuit board industry. In 2008, I left Merix Corporation as their Executive VP of Global Op- erations and was looking for the opportunity to establish a company with a high level of ser- vice and technology and a little more flexibility. I acquired APCT in 2008. At the time of the acquisition, it was a low-technology facil- ity in Santa Clara, California, producing two- and four-layer boards. Annual revenue was at $4 million and only four customers. It really wasn't the customer list or the product mix that attracted me, but the layout of the facility. The industry was changing and evolving in North America and I loved the idea of having the op- portunity to grow into a facility and create the environment that I had always envisioned the industry needed. We spent the last eight and a half years en- hancing the facility and growing the custom- er base. We have invested over $9 million in equipment and facility renovations and, today, we have transformed to an advanced technol- ogy, HDI-focused operation. This year, we'll do about $39 million in revenue. We have four hundred active customers and our engineering and core competency is building solutions in the advanced technology segment, especially in HDI, where industry designers start to struggle