Through a partnership with a local firm, Walters will own a 50 per cent stake in a manufacturing plant in Nantong which will be in operation by March next year.
In the past the firm has outsourced low cost production work to China but found this difficult to manage. “With that sort of manufacturing partnership in China you are not really in control when trying to manage a customer’s design through a third party,” said Clive Matthews, sales manager at Walters Microsystems.
Matthews insists that volume manufacturing in China will not replace the work at the firm’s UK facility which has expanded to four surface mount assembly lines in the last 12 months. “We have made $5m of capital investment here in the last three years,” said Matthews.
An example of the type of product which is moving to volume production is a GPS antenna module which goes in to a mobile handset.
“Right now we are producing 50,000 a month, but volumes are ramping and that will reach over two million a month next year. We could not support those volumes in the UK facility alone,” said Matthews.
www.waltersmicro.co.uk
