Melexis opens plant in Bulgaria

The continuous strong growth of the company and the increasingly demanding IC requirements have urged on the need for increased testing capacity and new state of the art testing equipment for the existing site in Sofia. Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev officially inaugurated the 12000 m² site including one of the largest clean rooms in Bulgaria. This 1000 m² wafer probing area meets class 10 000 requirements of the US FED STD 209E clean room standards and is equipped with 25 new wafer probing machines and has a total capacity of 100 machines. Over 50 new test cells for final testing are in place currently and a further 120 will be added in the coming three years. In a period of three years Melexis plans to invest 30 million euro in this new plant including machinery and employee training. The current work force of 200 people is expected to double within the same period in order to meet the growing need for increasingly demanding ICs in automotive, industrial and consumer markets. At the official opening ceremony Françoise Chombar, CEO of Melexis, explained: “After a presence of over 10 years this building marks a new milestone in the development of Melexis in Bulgaria . It shows our belief in the future potential of this country and its people. Its central location between Europe and Asia and its highly skilled workforce are major assets. Moreover the efficiency and consequently the low cost of public authorities yield a relatively low tax on labor. We believe Bulgaria is well positioned to be very successful in competing with other countries, certainly now that it will most probably be joining the EU".