From CPES2015: What will it take to ‘turbo-charge’ Canada’s PE industry? 

Join the Canadian delegation for Printed Electronics USA 2015

Last fall, “Team Canada PE” made a big splash at this conference with the standout Canadian Pavilion. This delegation of Canadian companies was led by the National Research Council of Canada and marked the official “coming out” of the CPEIA. For 2015, the plan is bigger and bolder, with spots for 11 co-exhibitors in a 1,600-square-foot pavilion positioned to have a lot of visibility. 

If you are involved in PE, this is not an event you want to miss. Hosted by market research firm IDTechEx, PE USA is the largest event in the world dedicated to Printable and Organic Electronics and the business of getting PE-enabled products and applications to market. More than 225 exhibitors and 3,000 attendees are expected from around the world for this year’s show, which takes place in Santa Clara, CA, Nov. 18-19.

Reservations are coming in and only a few spots remain. To secure your spot in the Canadian Pavilion, please contact Thomas Ducellier, Executive Director, PE Flagship Program, NRC, at Thomas.Ducellier@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca 

Use the CPEIA discount to attend the Atlantic Venture Forum

The Atlantic Venture Forum returns to Halifax on June 10 and 11. It brings together the best, boldest, most innovative emerging and established IT, Cleantech, and Life Sciences companies in Atlantic Canada, for two full days of engaging and insightful presentations from entrepreneurs, panel sessions with investors from across Canada and the U.S., and compelling Keynote Speakers. You can learn more at www.atlanticventureforum.ca 

CPEIA Members can attend with a 15 percent discount. If you are interested, please contact Leo Valiquette, Director of Marketing and Communications for the CPEIA, for the discount code.

Why PE matters to Quebec’s Varitron

By Fabio Ferrarini

Varitron Technologies is one of the biggest electronics manufacturing services (EMS) companies in Canada, headquartered south of Montreal. Michel Farley, who is still president and largest shareholder, founded the company in 1991. Operations are supported by a total of three plants, St-Hubert and Granby in Quebec, and Hudson, NH. We offer PCBA design and assembly, functional testing services, product integration and full box-build, BOM analysis and cost-reduction roadmaps. We also offer value-added processes such as conformal coating, overmolding and nanocoating.

Varitron operates with a customer base primarily in these market segments: Energy, Optics, Aerospace, Defence and Transportation. Even though most of the PCBAs we build for these customers are complex, their design approach is conservative. Technology has evolved in our business primarily in components size, board density and assembly speeds.

We are, however, approaching a threshold where higher density will actually start to increase PCBA costs because of higher quality fallout. This is where Printable Electronics become interesting for Varitron.

Varitron can not expect to be approached by a customer and get asked to quote a printed electronics device because the market segments cited above are just too conservative and do not have any guidance towards PE. From a strategic point of view, if an EMS such as ours can offer PE services, then these segments will likely adopt the technology faster.

Varitron is thus strongly motivated to move in this direction and lead the technology shift. Our goal is to partner with a few active customers and move forward with tangible PE concepts in which a major cost advantage would stand out. With the help of research centres in Canada, we aim to develop physical prototypes in 2015-2016.

Fabio Ferrarini is Business Development Manager for Varitron Technologies. He can be reached at fferrarini@varitron.ca