Eurocircuits looks back at a year of growth – despite the challenges

Eurocircuits have, just as the rest of the industry, been battling headwinds related to the pandemic and the shortage of components – but even so the company managed to record growth in both its reporting segments.

“The past year has challenged us several times, and not only because of the SARS COVID restrictions. We always made every effort to protect our staff whilst at the same time continuing production even with staff shortages due to quarantine,” the company writes in a press release.

One of the measures the company implemented to counter the effects of the semiconductor shortage was the introduction of a Parts Reservation service, and at the same time Eurocircuits strengthened its partnership with component suppliers in order to avoid delays.

Another challenge throughout the year has been the rising costs of operation. The price for raw materials have increase, as has transport and energy. The company highlights that for instance the price for copper has risen by 51% during the year and air freight by nearly 26%.

“We avoided this impacting our pricing and thus our customers’ costs in 2021 by purchasing and holding a large stock of raw and base materials at the old price,” Eurocircuits states in the update.

Besides the fight that everyone had to fight, Eurocircuits was also stuck by a fire accident at its PCB factory. On October 27, a fire struck Eurocircuits operations in Hungary. The fire hit the pan of the Hot Air Level (HAL) machine in one of the buildings at the factory – the flames grew and spread quickly and soon the entire HAL department stood in flames.

Even before the company was allowed back in to the factory, it was already purchasing cleaning equipment, and planning how to get everything back up and running as soon as possible; something that did not take very long. From the November 5 and onwards, business is back to normal at the factory – with the exception that the company needed two additional days of lead time for orders that require HAL or gold fingers.

Looking at the figures for 2021 turn over increased with 13% and ended up at EUR 36 million. The company’s PCB manufacturing operations recorded a turnover growth of 7.8%. 94,402 orders was placed by 11,739 customer during the year. Eurocircuits PCBA operations saw its turnover increase by 25.9% in 2021 and 2,346 customer placed a total of 9,510 orders during the year.