The annual Taiwan Printed Circuit Association (TPCA) trade show took place for three days this past week at the Taipei World Trade Center.
More than 300 technology companies and organizations occupied booths. Some foreign companies partnered with major trading companies. Total attendance numbered over 400. Exhibitors overflowed the floor of the main building and TPCA was forced to allow another floor adjacent to the main building to accommodate spillover.
The 2007 TPCA Show has evolved into the largest exhibition for the printed circuit board (PCB) and related industry support vendors in Asia. (Excluding Japan)
Both engineers and buyers from printed circuit manufacturing companies in Taiwan visited the exhibition with numerous foreign visitors coming from Japan; North America and Europe, as well as from Korea; Hong Kong, Singapore and India.
It could be said, the TPCA show may have more foreign visitors than the JPCA (Japan Printed Circuit Association) show held in Japan. However, the JPCA show is still larger than TPCA and, it holds the position as the industry’s technical leader. However, TPCA could hold bragging rights as the ‘business center’ for the global printed wire board (PWB) industry.
Visitor expectations
Expectations at TPCS this year were low with regards to discovering new technologies. Most attendees seemed interested in finding lower-cost materials and manufacturing equipment. Meanwhile, buyers / attendees are not necessarily loyal to Taiwanese materials and equipment manufacturers, but, instead, will shop their requirement from other countries. On this note, vendors and manufacturers from China seemed to receive most of these inquiries.
There were some universities and institutes that reserved prime exhibition location to display innovative technology and research advances while chronicling technical disciplines and studies, and also providing historical records for the PWB industry. These booths indulged those individuals new to the industry, as well as industry veterans, and some outsiders wanting to acquire more knowledge.
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This year’s Taiwan Printed Circuit Association show also provided statistical and historical data from the global printed circuits industry in Taiwan and other major PWB manufacturing markets, including mainland China. The statistical numbers are valuable because the data breaks out manufacturing numbers from China and Taiwan, separately – perhaps adding a degree of trustworthiness to the information.
Most industry and market research reports seem to count the numbers of Taiwanese manufacturers, and those flagged as ‘Made in China’, twice, when comparing to foreign, competing industry companies. There is reason to Taiwan will become the business center for the global PWB or electronics business.
One untimely bit of luck for the exhibition this year was the historically-enormous typhoon descending on the Taipei region during the week. TPCA closed exhibits one-half hour early and asked exhibitors to clean and vacate their booths before midnight.
Many attendees had left by Friday afternoon in order to return home. This left minimal attendance numbers for Friday. (Typically, the last day is the busiest day at the exhibition).
On the last day, a watchful eye could see exhibitors beginning to shut down after 3:00 p.m. while many resilient, Taiwanese sales folks continued hustling and negotiating deals.
The typhoon eventually landed on Northern Taiwan Saturday afternoon — bringing with it heavy rains and strong winds, and leaving serious damage to the area.
Staying into Saturday, I visited with one PWB manufacturer in the Taipei area for a meeting. The end result of this was Company management guaranteed product delivery by the end of the week. The president of the company dismissed employees, asking them to travel by taxicabs instead of their small motor scooters.
Soon afterward, the sales manager loaded products into a car and left the company premises into the stormy weather to deliver product to a customer in the next province — another example of Taiwanese PWB manufacturers displaying tenacity and toughness.
Source: EPT Newsletter
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