Shellcase to invest $8 million
to expand production facility
Shellcase, a leading developer and provider of Wafer Level
Chip Size Packaging (WLCSP), announced today that it is expanding its
production facility in Jerusalem at a cost of $8 million. The expansion
began in May 2001 following the successful closing of a $20 million private
placement in April 2001. The new facility will increase the production
floor three fold and will be completed in November 2001.
The expanded facility will add 1500 square meters of clean room production
floor space which will be equipped with state-of-the-art production
equipment for processing semiconductor silicon wafers and packaging them
in Shellcase's innovative miniaturization packaging technologies. Shellcase
is in the process of a major recruiting drive in advance of the new facility's
opening, in addition to the 150 employees already employed.
"Demand for Shellcase's products remains strong, despite the slowdown
in
the global chip industry," according to Shlomo Oren, Shellcase's
President and CEO. "The larger facility, together with our joint
venture facility in
Taiwan, will provide Shellcase with the capacity we need to accommodate
our present as well as expected future growth. Obviously, this necessitates
expanding our workforce in all departments: Engineering and Research &
Development, Marketing and Operations."
Shellcase is experiencing high growth and market demand for it products
from leading semiconductor companies as well as from end product developers
worldwide. In June, Sanyo Electric of Japan signed a license agreement
with Shellcase for the production of a miniature CCD camera module and
production will reach 500,000 cameras per month by Q4 2001. Among the
end product developers utilizing Shellcase's technology are CreoScitex,
developer of an innovative 6.6-mega pixel CMOS-based sensor for digital
photography, Delsy, producer of an innovative finger print identification
module with a fiber optic faceplate, as well as Given Imaging of Yoqneam,
Israel, developer of the camera-in-a-pill, which recently received FDA
approval in the United States.
About Shellcase
Shellcase is a leading global supplier of innovative wafer level chip
size packaging solutions for semiconductor devices for the growing digital
imaging, data telecommunications and PDA markets. Shellcase has developed
a proprietary, patented chip-size packaging technology using a wafer-level
process. The company provides contract packaging services and also licenses
its advances CSP technology, ShellBGA and ShellOP, to IC manufacturers
worldwide. Contract packaging services are provided at the manufacturing
facility in Jerusalem and through a joint venture in Taiwan. Shellcase
is publicly traded on the Canadian Venture Exchange under the symbol SSD.
The company was founded in 1993 and has its headquarters in Jerusalem,
Israel and offices in Silicon Valley.
Contact:
Eric Rosenberg
Marketing Communications Manager
Shellcase LDT.
Phone: +972-2-6798890 Ext. 218
Fax: +972-2-6798850
