Services in demand

Although the company imported $50million worth of pcbs into Europe from the Far East last year, Exception’s chief executive Craig Wright says the company is seeing growing customer demand for offshore volume production of other products. To meet this demand, the company is investing in new products and services at its electronics offshore solutions division in Malaysia. “Tier one OEMs are looking towards tier two contract manufacturers to help them deliver on their promises,” he explained. “We have seen a huge increase in demand over the last 12 months for non pcb products from our offshore outsourcing arm and predict this trend of consolidation will become a key area of differentiation for suppliers such as Exception.” Products other than pcbs represented 7.5% of the company’s imports last year, with a value of $4m. Wright predicts the figure will reach $10m in 2008.