How it started
History
In 1975, ASM founder Arthur del Prado went to Hong Kong for a business meeting with its customer Philips. During his time there, he took the opportunity to survey the prospects for the semiconductor industry in Hong Kong. Eventually he established ASM Pacific Technology (ASMPT) with Patrick Lam, an electrical engineer that del Prado recruited during his visit. At first, the company’s business was acting as an agent for the sales of semiconductor materials and shelf production in Asia.
Originally ASMPT was an Asian sales branch of ASM which derived its revenue from the sale of encapsulation equipment from the Netherlands and related materials from the U.S. By 1977, ASMPT had established a sizeable customer base and moved into small-scale production of mold bases. Soon it was producing custom-designed trim and form tools.
In 1979, ASMPT made two landmark decisions. The first was to acquire a 10,000 square-foot industrial property to support its move into the production of lead frames. The second was the acquisition of a wire bonder manufacturing business in Hong Kong from an American company.
In 1980, ASMPT looked into designing its own automated equipment. To do this, the company went on an aggressive recruitment spree to attract young engineering university graduates. In 1981, it launched a conversion kit that enabled manual aluminum wire bonder to operate semi-automatically. By 1984, it launched its fully-automatic wire bonders. In 1985, ASMPT produced its first die bonder aimed at LED manufacturers. By the end of the 1980s, the sales of leadframes and equipment provided steady profit streams for ASMPT.
At the end of 1989, ASMPT opened a plant in Shenzhen. ASMPT shifted its attention from manufacturing to research and development (R&D). Singapore was selected as its new R&D location due to tax incentives from the Economic Development Board. Former ASMPT CEO, Lee Wai-kwong stated that Hong Kong engineers would find a solution in the shortest possible time and be done with it while Singapore engineers would take longer to understand the root cause and come up with a more effective solution.
From Wikipedia’s article on ASMPT, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2