Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1443477
24 PCB007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2022 ers are based in Germany. Not only are they extremely demanding customers, but they may be driving some of the local PCB production because some of their material requirements are tricky to get outside of Europe. Our focus in the automotive industry is predominantly on niche applications in high-mix, low-volume areas and on Tier 2 and Tier 3 customers. Johnson: For those products (EV charging), is that primarily a European market, or are you seeing those products in your global mix? Forsen: So far, it's mainly for European mar- kets. We are working with several customers which are growing extremely fast and proba- bly will sell outside Europe as well. e growth started, for example, in Norway, then they started to sell to the other Nordic countries and then to Europe. ey are seeing the mar- ket grow that way. Johnson: irty-five to 40% organic growth is dramatic. How sustainable is that? Do you see that as a bump in orders from customers, or is this really growing into new markets that you see as being steady business going forward? Forsen: We did face a weaker market in 2020 and 2021, which boosts the year-on-year com- parison. You can see that orders have increased even more, but that's also due to long lead times in the factories in China, some issues with the freight situation, and so on. We have encouraged our customers to order more in advance. We have seen a stronger growth in orders, but that will probably even out in the first half of 2022. Of course, we cannot have another year with 35–40% growth, but hope- fully we will have another double-digit per- centage growth. Johnson: at's still some very strong growth. Based on the NCAB business model, which uses a network of fabricators that you work with, has this growth been a capacity challenge for you? Forsen: No, not really. We may have seen a lit- tle during winter 2021 because all the facto- ries were at full capacity. But the beauty of our business model and our size is the strong rela- tionships we have with our factories. We aim to be one of their top three customers, hence they prioritize us. When there are some issues, we have a much easier time getting boards out of those factories and seamlessly into another appropriate factory. We have a huge factory management team in Asia—some 90 in China and 10 in Taiwan— working with the factories daily; they manage to secure a high delivery reliability for our cus- tomers. In this respect, you can see that the pandemic has highlighted some of the advan- tages of working with NCAB, as smaller trad- ers or direct buying customers have not been able to travel. No one has been able to visit the factories in China, for example, and maintain their relationships. But since we have so many people onsite in China and Taiwan, we can be there daily developing the factories, making Anders Forsen