Thinfilm takes over former Qualcomm fabrication facility

The new location will house the Norwegian company’s new high-volume roll-to-roll manufacturing line. With this roll-based production will increase Thinfilm’s front-end production capacity to five billion NFC OpenSense and NFC SpeedTap tags per year – equivalent of up to USD 680 million in annual revenue. The company is planning to begin ordering line-related equipment straight away. The facility upgrade will enable Thinfilm to scale existing sheet-based manufacturing of its NFC (Near Field Communication), EAS (Electronic Article Surveillance), and Sensor Label products. Roll-to-roll production is expected to be operational for EAS by year-end 2017 and for transistor-based products in 2018.

© Thinfilm

The building – located in San Jose, California – was formerly an operational display fab run by Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, and was in production until the Spring of 2016. More than USD 80 million has previously been invested in the 93’000 square-foot facility, which sits on 5.4 acres and features a 22’000+ square foot, Class 10-10’000 cleanroom. “We’re very excited about the new facility and the role we see it playing in scaling Thinfilm’s manufacturing capabilities, particularly for SpeedTap and OpenSense. Given the growing market demand for NFC smart packaging, it was vital that we secure a facility that enables us to ramp capacity to ultra-high volumes through roll-to-roll production,” said Davor Sutija, Thinfilm’s CEO. The company will immediately start working on improvements within the office-space portions of the facility, and will begin equipment installation by year-end. Occupancy of the new facility is expected in March 2017.