The cat's out of the bag – meet Europe's newest PCB company
Just before Christmas, Evertiq could disclose that Vidar Olsen – former Chief Procurement Officer of Elmatica – would lead the new secret PCB player as Chief Executive Officer. What has now become clear is that he is not the only familiar face.
Introducing CONFIDEE, Europe’s newest compliance partner in the printed circuit industry. The company –which Evertiq has been reporting on under the name “Watch us launch” since mid-November – has already gathered a familiar team of experts from the field of PCBs. In a new press release, this time from the company itself, Vidar Olsen is presented as the company’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Raymond Goh as its Chief Operations Officer (COO) and Robert Kurti is Chief Information Officer (CIO).
“Our entrance to the market will be a game changer in the industry, specifically in relation to handling compliance data”, says CEO Vidar Olsen.
Vidar explains in the press release that to be able to handle compliance data correctly, you practically need to begin from scratch to understand the demand and requirements of institutions, governments, manufacturers, and customers in order to build an IT system, literally code by code.
CONFIDEE is headquartered in Oslo, Norway with local sales offices. As of January 2023, the company consists of 11 colleagues, all with an average of more than 20 years' of experience in the printed circuit industry.
The rest of the team consists of Asle Høibybråten as Operations Manager, Anders Evensen as Compliance Manager, Torger Edland as Sales Manager Norway, Michel Buia as Sales Manager France, Janne Persson as Sales Manager Sweden, Torben Hajslund as Sales Manager Denmark, Guro Krossen as Communications Manager, and Feti Jashari as Senior Software Engineer.
When Vidar Olsen was disclosed as the CEO of the company, Evertiq sent out questions to the mysterious source that has been sending us news tips, which has now been disclosed as Guro Krossen – also formerly with Elmatica.
What was it that you saw was missing on the market that made you actually take the step to establish the company?
“Well, it's quite easy. After decades in the industry, we found a niche and void in the market that historically no one has served, or documented accurately, namely compliance. We wanted to change this, so the idea of creating and starting something to service this niche was clear. To be able to handle compliance data, one needs to start developing a system from scratch, this we have done and will continue to do. Here we are today, launching the company with 11 highly motivated colleagues”, Vidar Olsen explains to Evertiq in an emailed statement
While being a new company, basically just a day old, Vidar says that CONFIDEE have a thorough understanding of all aspects of printed circuit data from design to end of life and are one of the most experienced teams in the industry.
As the first order of business, how will CONFIDEE start 2023?
"We have counted down since mid-November looking forward to this day. I can say that 2023 looks very promising, we are expecting to triple the number of colleagues in CONFIDEE within three years. Currently the number of actors in the printed circuit industry has steadily declined, and we experience that customers are asking for more competition in the market. The global market is challenging, and this is a great opportunity for new actors as they are more flexible, customer focused, willing and able to explore new opportunities and challenge existing cost levels", Olsen concludes.
