BEKAERT EXPANDS ASIAN OPERATIONS

To meet the increasing market demand for Bekaert’s advanced line of sputtering equipment, the company today announced the opening of a new plant in Suzhou, China. Along with supplying Asian glass coaters with state-of-the-art sputter equipment, the site will also include customer service, maintenance and technical support personnel to serve the Asian market.

Bekaert presently holds a significant part of the market for rotatable magnetron sputtering equipment in China. The company is expanding to meet the needs of its industrial customers who are upgrading their facilities from planar equipment to Rotatable Magnetron Sputtering systems; this conversion reduces their total cost of ownership, while maintaining high quality glass coating. Continuing this trend, Bekaert has already generated three new orders from local area customers in the region for Bekaert end blocks, cathodes and TiOx and SiAl sputter targets. 

Additionally, in order to support the rapid growth of the Asian glass and display market, Bekaert’s Suzhou-based sputter products team will provide glass coaters throughout Asia with dedicated end block maintenance and technical support services.

Sputtering is a vacuum coating process and one of the core methods for depositing thin films on glass. Bekaert’s technology allows a switch from planar to rotatable targets and offers lower cost of ownership through longer production runs, faster coating deposition and a more complete use of coating material. Bekaert has built up its experience in this field through its own sputter activity on plastic foil for window film and for industrial applications. Bekaert was the first to bring rotatable targets on the market and has developed the necessary sputter equipment to effectively use these targets on glass coating lines all over the world.

Bekaert is a multibillion-dollar technology company that leads the market in advanced metal transformation and advanced material development and coatings.  Bekaert has combined sales of € 2.7 billion and employs 16,400 people worldwide. The company is headquartered in Belgium and has facilities strategically located throughout the world in 120 countries.