KUALA LUMPUR: JF Technology Bhd (JTB) and and US-based Ironwood Electronics Inc (IEI) signed a cross-distribution agreement.
The agreement entails JTB in utilising IEI’s contact assembly cartridges, including cantilever, rigid, and it’s new ATE-P contact assembly for high performance BGA/LGA testing.
IEI will utilise JTB’s high performance contact pins, both cantilever and rigid, within its contact assembly cartridges, within their test sockets.
Together with JFT, IEI can now bring high performance BGA/LGA solutions and replaceable cartridge contact assemblies to their customers throughout Asia.
Both companies will continue to sell their own products worldwide, but will now also have the right to sell each other’s products, with IEI focusing on the US and Europe and JTB focusing on Asia.
Both parties bring extensive intellectual property with IEI with their highly proprietary laminated contact assemblies, and JTB with their high performance, high insertion count contact pins.
JTB MD Datuk Foong Wei Kuong sees strong synergies from this collaboration.
“Together, we will be leveraging on each other’s strong expertise and established network to further expand our geographical presence.
“We will be each other’s partner and distributing each other’s outperforming products in selected markets. In turn, this would open up more opportunities that we can capitalise on together,“ he said.
JTB is the manufacturer of high-performance test contacting solutions for global integrated circuit (IC) makers, while IEI, a leader in bench top laboratory and characterisation test sockets based in Minnesota and is part of Heico Corporation.
Heico is listed on the New York Stock Exchange with a market capitalisation of more than US$28 billion.
IEI CEO David Struyk said this agreement aligns perfectly with the company’s entry into the ATE market.
“We could not be more excited than to partner with JTB and benefit from their experience and established precision manufacturing,“ he said.
