The Abrel team is just back from a very productive coast to coast trip across the USA. Declan and Paul jetted off to spend a week meeting up with our customer base in both California and along the East Coast of America.
Abrel has been supplying burn-in boards and burn-in systems to businesses in the United States since 1994 and we have built up many long-standing relationships.
Being based in Ireland, with good transport routes, means we can deliver to the US market within about a week and supply times to mainland Europe are a little shorter at about 2 days.
We really enjoy taking time to catch up face to face with clients and to make it over to events such as BiTS Workshop where we can meet new businesses and industry professionals.
Burn-in Board Growth
2017 has been a great year so far for Abrel with many of our key markets experiencing strong growth. Several of the companies we met in the US are planning to invest over the second half of the year – in anticipation of possible tax and manufacturing incentives.
We expect to see a growth in sales of 8% to US companies in 2017 and we expect this region to continue to be a driving force in the marketplace into the foreseeable future. It was great to see and to share a strong sense of optimism with our US customers.
California Calling
Our first stop in the trip was California. It’s fair to say the landscape has changed over the past 20 to 25 years since we started working with companies in the region. This is particularly true in the Silicon Valley area obviously but there is still a thriving semiconductor manufacturing sector there.
When we first entered the US market a lot of our customers were from more traditional industries and the auto market was particularly significant, for example. While auto customers are still vital to our business (more later) as things have evolved we now also supply several fast-growing industries such as mobile and telecoms.
Abrel always focuses on nurturing relationships with our clients, because we know that the more we understand our clients businesses, the better placed we are to deliver effective product. This means that we can respond effectively and in a timely way to the different needs of each company. This is especially important in the context of technology today, as the pace of change is so rapid, our customers need to be nimble and to evolve with the market. Being able to keep up with market dynamics is probably one of the toughest challenges that we all face, whether you’re based in the States, the Far East or Ireland! And our ability to respond quickly to customer needs is one of the key things that sets Abrel apart from competitors. It was gratifying to meet customers in California who expressed this view!
East Coast Customers
We stopped at a number of key locations for Abrel along the East Coast, where we supply a variety of our products into the automotive industry. Auto sales in the US have been growing over the past few years and new policies from central government are encouraging more investment and employment in this sector, so manufacturing capacity is also growing.
As it so happens it was particularly handy to visit the East Coast because it gave us a chance to catch up with a number of contacts we met when we went to the BiTS Workshop. A number of these follow-up meetings were very constructive and we look forward to welcoming new customers in the near future.
Semiconductor Manufacturers
Abrel supply reliable solutions to several semiconductor manufacturers throughout the United States including Linear, Intel, Analog Devices, Allegro, Microsemi and Maxim Integrated.
However there was no need to catch up with all of these key clients on our trip to the US as many of them, including Intel and Analog Devices have located offices in Ireland. Happily this gives us an opportunity to further strengthen our ties with these global payers and we may well see more US companies locating European facilities here, given Brexit.
Please contact us if you require any further details about our products.
