SILTERRA EXPECTS TO HAVE SUFFICIENT EXPERTS IN 10 YEARS
by Rupa Damodaran

SILTERRA Malaysia, the second largest wafer foundry in South-East Asia, expects to be self-sufficient in 10 years by undertaking staff training through internship programmes and attracting talents home. 

In the last six months alone, it has effectively lured back at least 15 technical experts from Singapore and other places. 

“That may not be gigantic figures but we expect the number to increase as we move ahead,” its chief operating officer and interim chief executive officer Bruce Gray said. 

“Our majority shareholder Khazanah Nasional Bhd, as well as the rest, wants us to train as many Malaysian engineers as possible so that we can be self-sufficient as soon as possible and bring technology into the country,” Gray, who has been at the helm of the company since last year, added. 

The cornerstone of the semiconductor manufacturing industry in Malaysia, Silterra is focused on delivering shareholder value and enabling national design capability. 

Its headquarters and factory are located in Kulim, Kedah, and its sales and marketing offices in San Jose (California), Scottsdale (Arizona), Hsinchu (Taiwan) and Munich (Germany). 

Describing its development model as similar to Taiwanese contract chip makers United Microelectronics Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp, where employees underwent training in the US more than a decade ago, he said Silterra’s 900-odd staff are provided with the same opportunities. 

Its local staff get opportunities to serve in offices overseas, albeit smaller outfits in Europe and larger sales offices in the US. 

They are exposed to customer engineering, marketing and sales areas. 

“We try to encourage folks to go there and spend a year, get used to business processes, get the education and deal with customers before they are sent back here. 

“As we get bigger, and other sales offices grow, then we will be rotating folks there as well,” he said, adding that the company is now looking at Taiwan in terms of proximity to Malaysia, as well as being the next largest office. 

Silterra had recently expanded the Taiwan office as well as opened an office in Kuala Lumpur and Europe. 

Due to the nature of its business where it deals with proprietary product business models, Silterra only manufactures orders when the products are successful in the market place such DVDs, cellphones and certain display models for Personal Digital Assistant (PDAs). 

On high voltage technology, which is proprietary to Silterra, Gray added that the company has found customers in the display market areas in Japan and South Korea. 

“We hope they will become a larger portion of our business so that we can service them with customer engineering, marketing and sales capabilities. That will be the next step to take.” 

HI-TECH : Silterra wants us to train as many Malaysian engineers as possible 
It currently has 10 customers in the production phase, 10 in the prototype phase with nine customers in the design phase. 

While a majority of them are based in the US, another 30 per cent are in Taiwan and South Korea. 

Under the prototype phase, the percentage of customers from Europe and South Korea has increased significantly. 

“That is an indication of the future mix of business will look like. Our manufacturing orders come from prototype success. As you begin to see the mix of your prototype change geographically, that will give some indication of what the eventual manufacturing business will look like on a geographical basis in the future.” 

North America contributed the major share of revenue at 73 per cent and Asia accounted for 27 per cent when the company recently announced the results of the fiscal second quarter that ended June 26 2004. 

While the company anticipates its first European customers to initiate production ramps by the end of the year, it also expects the revenue share for Asia to increase. 

It also exported more than 50,000 wafers while improving the average selling price per wafer by almost 10 per cent on a year-on-year basis. 



About Silterra Malaysia Sdn. Bhd.:

Silterra Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. is a leading semiconductor wafer foundry that provides advanced foundry standard CMOS logic, high-voltage and mixed-signal/RF technologies. The company’s wafer fab has a designed capacity of 38,000 eight-inch wafers per month. Silterra, which is committed to world-class service and environmental friendliness, received Notable Mention in the Malaysian Prime Minister’s Hibiscus Award competition for Environmental Performance in 2003. The company is ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 14001 certified. Silterra’s headquarters and factory are located in Kulim, Malaysia, and has offices in San Jose (California), Scottsdale (Arizona), Hsinchu (Taiwan) and Munich (Germany). For additional information on Silterra or its services, please visit www.silterra.com.