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44 The PCB Magazine • December 2015 members connected. We bring together the us- ers, the OEMs, the designers, the manufactur- ers, the suppliers, and that's our strongest point. Morgan: We have to see the thing in context. European PCB revenues are now around 4.3% of the worldwide business, so around $2.6 bil- lion is done in Europe. There has been a decline in worldwide share here for many years. But the European market does specialize in certain ar- eas. For example, we would call defense a very big activity for us in Europe, as well as medical and automotive. Even though sometimes the production might be offshore, the IP is still held in Europe, and we still have things that we can offer that are unique within Europe. We can offer two things: First, we can offer access to our markets and technologies in Eu- rope to people outside the area. For example, we have a few North American members now who joined the EIPC so they could contact and con- nect with European PCB companies. Matties: Are those suppliers? Morgan: Suppliers, yes. Test labs as well who wanted to access the market for test in Europe. That was one thing. The second thing is we also help our mem- bers within Europe make contact with other parts of the world. I'll give you a good example: Many of the shops in Europe have small pro- duction capabilities—they're very specialized— and they have a need to satisfy bigger require- ments from their customers, but they no longer have the volume capability to do so. We can help them to find partners in other parts of the world who can satisfy that part of their business, so their customers in Europe can come to them as a one-stop shop. These people need partners now. You can't always do it on your own any more. The days of somebody being able to do everything from single digit batch sizes to batch sizes in the thousands using different technolo- gies are gone. Nobody can have that capability in-house anymore, especially in Europe. You need to have partners that can comple- ment your activity. Many of our members do ex- actly that. We are able to help them by finding partners. We are part of a worldwide organiza- tion, the World Electronic Circuits Council, so we have partners in China, Japan, Korea, India, North America, Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc. We have direct contact with the trade associations in Asia accounting for over 90% of worldwide PCB production and can make connections at a very high level. Those are two very good examples of how we can bring things in and take things out. Matties: How often do people actually take ad- vantage of that, though? Morgan: They are more and more. Michael Weinhold, our technical director, is attending the HKPCA & IPC show in December and tak- ing one of our members with him to look for exactly that. He was there last year doing ex- actly that with another member company. We have a partner in Asia named David Ho, whose business is finding partners for our members. Matties: Ivan's son. Morgan: Ivan's son, yes. Ivan was doing it before, but sadly, we lost Ivan a few years ago, which is a great shame. David has taken over the role and it's critical, because you can find partners around the world. You can go on the Internet, you can search, and you can find partners. You just don't know whether they have a factory, whether they have an organization, or whether they're reliable. EIPC: FURTHERING THE REACH OF ELECTRONICS INDUSTRIES IN EUROPE FeATure inTerview alun Morgan, chairman, eIpc.