How do you see the development for the European market?

In the European market we see business growth in 2010. This growth is targeted in certain geographical areas and not consistently across the entire market.

In the USA we experienced a solid investment in our AOI during the first quarter and we are witnessing similar investment in Q2. The business here is growing cautiously, but we definitely see more activities across all technology segments, but in particularly the automotive portion of our business.

It is too early to predict how business will grow for the entire year—not only for Orpro Vision, but for our industry—until all fiscal reports are published and analyzed.

You mentioned before that your focus for 2010 and on is the development of a brand new concept of inspection. Can you please let us know a little bit more about this?

During Productronica and SMTA San Diego last year we showed a prototype version of our new bench top AOI machine, Spectrum. This bench top AOI is a new development by Orpro Vision from concept to production. We will definitely enter the bench top AOI market with this new machine in 2010; this is our newest offering in the AOI market.

There is demand for bench top sized AOI’s in our industry, but it is not entirely new; the interest in bench top AOI machines started to increase a few years back.

At Orpro Vision we believe that we need to provide a lower cost solution for big and small companies alike. The technology we develop for Spectrum will allow us introduce a new generation of AOI for all production needs in the EMS markets.

Is there a particular region or country where you are likely to develop a stronger presence?

Orpro Vision, LLC covers the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. We are investing more and extending our presence in Brazil, where there are many untapped possibilities.

In Europe we have a very good coverage and we are waiting to see which countries will contribute more business opportunities and be more active. We have distribution partners in Europe that have the expertise in the market and know our machines.

Most of Asia is currently still served by Orbotech—as part of our contract with them. By the end of the year (2010) we plan to take over the Asian market for AOI from Orbotech as well.

Do you plan to increase staff numbers? Do you have any particular investment plans?

We invested a lot in our newly structured R&D center in Germany, and much of that was in our talented team there.

In the Americas we kept the team we had with Orbotech as we transitioned to Orpro Vision. If the business continues to grow as we have seen in the 1st half we will need to add more staff, but the decision to do so will be cautious and based on the need to serve our growing install base. We did not lose the talent that we already had and all of our staff has many years of experience in the electronics industry, and specifically, within the AOI and EMS segments.

When we assume the Asian business from Orbotech, we will certainly acquire more talented people.

In Europe and USA we already took on a number of employees with the takeover. We kept the very talented people; for example, in R&D, we were able to hold on to most of the group. This is the reason why we could develop a new bench top AOI platform so soon.

Any particular machine model that is especially popular?

There is no one machine that is more popular than the rest. We see equal interest for all of our machines.

Some customers have bought several different machines from the same product line. You could say that all sales are equally divided across our full line of AOI solutions that are available to the market.