ICAPE Group's Marc L'Hoste speaks with Editor Nolan Johnson in this pre-show interview. Marc is the vice president of Western Americas, and he outlines what visitors can expect to learn about in the ICAPE Group booth, including manufacturing facilities recently added to the portfolio, new technologies, and a new corporate branding.
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To listen to this Real Time with… IPC APEX EXPO interview with Marc L'Hoste, click here.
Audio Transcript
Nolan Johnson: Hi, Nolan Johnson here for Real Time with… IPC APEX EXPO, and I'm speaking right now with the VP of the Western Americas at ICAPE Group, Marc L'Hoste. Marc, welcome.
Marc L'Hoste: Thank you, Nolan.
Johnson: We've been talking about APEX. Tell me about ICAPE Group's presence at the upcoming APEX event.
L'Hoste: Yes, of course. First of all, Nolan, I would like you to wish you and your listeners best wishes for 2022. So yes, after a record-breaking year in 2021 for ICAPE and ICAPE Group, we are going to exhibit this year at the APEX show, January 25 to 27 in San Diego, California. We are pretty excited about this show. It's a show that we have been doing now for close to the last 10 years, I would imagine. And there will be three people at the exhibition: myself, and our California team as well, Paulo Franca and Matthew Fraser, who are both currently living in Orange County. So yeah, we are very excited about this opportunity to meet with all different customers and prospects in California. And of course, also people from the different states of the USA that will be coming to visit the show.
Johnson: When visitors stop by your booth, what can they expect to find out about ICAPE Group?
L'Hoste: So, they will find actually a lot of new things this year. We are very excited as well to inform the world today that IT Group is doing is going through rebranding this year. So, we will have a brand-new logo, brand new website, brand new colors, and all these will be unveiled actually during the IPC. Our booth, our presentations, our different documentations will be all using the new brand. It’s still going to be ICAPE obviously, but new brand, new colors, which we believe will give us a better visibility, both in the real world and online. We are very excited about that and to unveil this during the IPC APEX EXPO.
Johnson: That's pretty exciting to have a new corporate look and a new image to put forth out to the marketplace. What do you have for technical topics or information that customers can locate as well as that corporate image?
L'Hoste: Yes, of course, the rebranding is a big part of what we want to display for the beginning of this year. But obviously 2021 has been an extremely busy year for ICAPE Group. We've launched or we acquired, I would say, several new companies in Europe and South Africa. We now have our own French circuit board factory with the company tracks that we acquired in South Africa. So, a lot of things, once again, happened in 2021 on the manufacturing side, on the marketing side. If we talk about technology, we have as well really made a big boost toward more complex technologies in 2021. We will keep on doing the same thing in 2022, especially on the printed circuit board side of the business. We've partnered with several new manufacturers in Asia, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and as well in Europe and North America in the U.S.
These manufacturers being really crème de la crème, I would say, when it comes to manufacturing of printed circuit boards, we've been able to do complex boards, such as eight layers, rigid-flex boards. We've done printed circuit boards over four feet long—really, really complex boards, multilayer board with over 30 layers, complex metal PCBs. It's something that we want to push forward in the future to really show that ICAPE can really follow their customers for all types of printed boards from the very basic single sided board to extremely complex printed secret boards.
Johnson: Well, it's going to be exciting to see you there on the show floor. It certainly has been a long time since we've all been able to get together face to face as an industry. It'll be exciting to see you.
L'Hoste: Definitely.
Johnson: Thanks for taking the time to speak with us today.
L'Hoste: Yes, really appreciate your time as well. And I look forward meeting all of you at the APEX show at the end of this month.
Johnson: Once again, I've been speaking with Mark L'Hoste, the vice president of Western Americas at ICAPE Group. Thanks for listening.
