By Sanjay Huprikar, president, Europe and South Asia operations

For the second straight year, IPC was thrilled to participate in the annual EMS-Tag, a one-day workshop held in Würzburg, Germany on 2 September for EMS executives and suppliers to network and find out about important topics impacting the industry. IPC showcased the new workforce training programs - Electronics Assembly for Operators and Electronics Assembly for Engineers - the latter which is already gaining nice acceptance among many European EMS companies since being launched on 12 July.

The highlight of the event was keynote speaker Dieter Weiss (in4ma for IPC) sharing mid-year statistics on the European EMS industry and providing his keen insights on the state of the recovery after tough, pandemic-related conditions beset the market in 2020.

Mr. Weiss’ key takeaways included the following:

• Of the 119 EMS companies surveyed (mostly from the German speaking countries of Germany, Austria and Switzerland), 67% showed a revenue increase in the first half of 2021 compared to the first half of 2020    
• But 33% showed a surprising revenue decrease in the first half of 2021 and Dieter explained that this was mainly the smaller companies (defined in this context as less than 50 million Euros in annual sales), who most likely saw the pandemic decline hit them in the second half of 2020 while the larger companies had begun to bounce back   
• Through cooperation with the Dutch industry association, FHI, the data collected from 11 companies in the Netherlands and Belgium revealed similar patterns seen in Germany: smaller companies struggling more than the larger ones
• Analyzing the first half book-to-bill numbers in Germany again revealed some wide gaps between larger and smaller EMS companies: with companies over 50 million Euros showing a B2B of greater than 1.8 and companies smaller than 50 million Euros showing a B2B in the range of 1.3 to 1.5.  Mr. Weiss speculated that customers of the larger EMS companies were placing orders far in advance to account for the global component allocations and shortages to give their vendor a better chance to secure supply.

Mr. Weiss’ next formal presentation on the state of the industry will take place on 2 December 2021 in Tallinn, Estonia as part of “IPC EMS Day” co-organized by IPC’s Senior Director in Europe, Philippe Leonard, and the Managing Director of the Estonian Electronics Industries Association, Arno Kolk.  As part of this unique event, there will be a “President’s Dinner” for European EMS CEOs on 1 December. More information can be found at www.in4ma.de and www.ipc.org