Cirtek to hike output of factories

Business Mirror

By VG Cabuag

Laguna-based Cirtek Holdings Philippines Corp. on Monday said it will scale up the output of its semiconductor plants by about 20 percent starting in the first quarter to meet growing demand for its products.

The company said its unit Cirtek Electronics Corp. will produce more products for its major customer called Quad Flat No Leads Package, which is widely used for high volume products like smart phones, PC and laptops, wireless communication and consumer electronics.

These devices are predicted as major factors that will boost the global semiconductor industry growth for 2021, the company said.

Cirtek said it will also need to support the needs of a global semiconductor company based in California in the United States, which is focused on Gallium Nitride (GaN) high power transistors and modules for high voltage power conversion applications. The product is for intelligent power modules that will increase efficiency and reliability in energy power system, electric chargers for electric vehicles, power adapters and inverters, among others.

“The company is fortunate to be in an industry that is about to experience a revolutionary boom and we are very excited to take part in creating and shaping a new world as we emerge where technology and communications will be a main driving force as evidenced by this pandemic,” Cirtek Vice Chairman Jorge Aguilar said.

Both businesses may contribute an additional volume of a production increase by 20 percent, the company said.

World Semiconductor Trade Statistics predicts that semiconductor sales will grow by 8.4 percent growth in 2021, reaching $469 billion in revenue, the company said.

Cirtek Advanced Technology and Solutions is set to roll out its 5G chipset for mass production.

Last year, the company bagged a multi-million dollar project with a Texas-based company for the manufacture of signal processing units and indoor radio frequency units that will be part of the system infrastructure that will be used for communication services for public safety, government, utilities and industrial customers.

The company also finalized contract manufacturing services with a New York-based company to mass produce radio frequency power modules for high speed data transmission for aerospace applications. Quintel USA Inc., its other unit that manufactures antennas, is projected to release a new line of C-Band antenna family early this year following an auction late last of year of the US Federal Communications Commission of its latest 5G spectrum.

The auction commenced last December 8, 2020, and by the third week of the month, it has broken record to be the largest US spectrum auction ever with gross proceeds of $69.83 billion. As a comparison, the highest grossing spectrum auction in US history was the AWS-3 (Advanced Wireless Services 3) auction in 2015 that garnered $44.9 billion. The said frequency is mostly used by US telecom giants AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile.