Season Group ready for Mexico

EMS-provider Season Group is looking back at almost 40 years of business. And the company is not quite finished with its expansion plans. Talking to COO Carl Hung, we dug a little deeper into the workings of the company, its investment plans and its market segments. The company was established in 1975 by Patrick Hung and started out as a small manufacturing business in Hong Kong. Slowly, the group expanded its breadth of offering and moved into other geographical regions (as well as new market segments) and now has a globe-spanning footprint with around 1'800 employees worldwide. Season Group is now one of the few EMS providers that operate facilities in Europe, North America and Asia but focus on small and medium-sized OEMs. Interesting enough, Carl still sees opportunities for regional growth. One of the main focus areas for Season Group at the moment is certifications. Carl tells me that the aim is to have all facilities certified for the production of a multitude of customers in all major market segments. Driven by customer demand, the contract manufacturer has greatly diversified its portfolio. Having a rather unique position in China - not many contract manufacturers in the country cater for high-mix / low-volume customers - we get to talk about manufacturing equipment, another focus point for the company. The group is currently upgrading its worldwide facilities to have a common machine platform. “This is a long-term investment plan. We are trying to become more standardised and decided on equipping our production facilities with i-Pulse M20 machines. This common platform gives customers the ability to selectively split production between different Season sites, allowing them to take advantage of the optimal solution for each of their products in terms of Cost, supply chain flexibility, tax, duty and engineering support – and even vary it across the life cycle of the product.” And he adds a bit of a scoop for us as well. The company is looking at opening a facility in Mexico. “In terms of investments and acquisitions, we are looking at Mexico right now. A lot of our North American customers tell us that we need to be there. So we are trying to close a deal in Mexico in the next 12 months.” He would like the Mexico site to have at least 3 of Season Group’s 4 main manufacturing capabilities: plastics, cables, PCBA and/or electromechanical assemblies.