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34 PCB007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2018 Feature Interview by Patty Goldman I-CONNECT007 While walking around the PCB hall at pro- ductronica, I was approached by my good friend Gene Weiner. Gene emphatically direct- ed me to the Elga booth to find out about their new extra-thick dry film that can image ex- tremely fine features with a perfectly perpen- dicular sidewall. Elga Europe CEO Giorgio Fa- vini filled me in on the details. Patty Goldman: Giorgio, I understand you have a new photoresist that is pretty amazing, but why don't we start with a little bit about you and your company. Giorgio Favini: Elga Europe was founded as Elga in 1973. At that time the company was very small with only one employee and a share capital value of €250. In 1979, an impor- tant joint venture with Lea Ronal began and the name changed to Elga Ronal. In 1989, the company started to import the dry film mas- ter rolls from Tokyo Ohka Kogyo, located in Ja- pan, to supply the Italian market, with much success. Thanks to this success, in 1995 Elga Ronal made an important joint venture with TOK and built the actual dry film coating facil- ity close to Milan. In 1999, Elga Ronal bought back the shares of Lea Ronal, changing the name to Elga Europe. In 2003, for strategic reasons, Elga started its own independent R&D on dry film, and in 2010 my family decided to buy back the shares of TOK and then owned the company at 100%. In 2013, we began the first joint venture with Eternal, the largest worldwide dry film produc- er, based in Taiwan. This merger was complet- ed in 2017 and Elga became part of the Eternal Chemical group. This year I became CEO of Elga Europe and second shareholder of the company after Eter- nal. Today Elga is the market leader in Europe for dry film with a market share greater than 70%; we are also selling ultrapure chemicals Elga Europe Reality and Ultra-High-Resolution Photoresist Figure 1: Elga Europe facility in Milan, Italy.