District Administrator Christian Engelhardt visits ALTER | HTV
2. July 2024
As part of the Germany-wide Digital Day, the District Administrator (Bergstrasse district) Christian Engelhardt visited us in Bensheim.
Digital technology and media are omnipresent and an integral part of everyday life. Artificial intelligence is currently at the center of the discourse, as the semiconductor industry has made enormous progress through further developments. While international chip manufacturers such as NVIDIA, Intel and AMD are well known, the Digital Day focused on a local semiconductor company in the Bergstrasse district.
Although no chips are produced in the circuit itself, the necessary electronic components are tested, programmed and conserved for later use as spare parts. This enables a longer and sustainable use of electronic devices, commercial vehicles and even ships. For this reason, District Administrator Christian Engelhardt visited HTV as part of the annual nationwide Digital Day to get to know the company better.
Thomas Kuhn, Assistant to the Management Board, reported that TÜV Nord Group acquired the main shares in the HTV Group last year in order to diversify further in the semiconductor industry. The company was integrated into its Europe-wide subsidiary ALTER Technology. The alliance now combines the expertise of both companies in the field of high-reliability and high-performance chips from the aerospace sector with industrial chips in the automotive sector in high volumes as well as analytics and long-term conservation.
This enables customers from various industries to outsource their semiconductor back-end processes individually and with a wide range of services. Both the assembly and the testing and packaging of electronic components are carried out from a single source, making the group a pioneer in Europe in the field of OSAT services (Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test)
Mr. Kuhn also reported on the current challenges. The supply bottlenecks in the early years of the coronavirus pandemic and the blockade of the Suez Canal by the cargo ship Evergreen highlighted the company’s dependence on overseas suppliers. Only a small proportion of electronic components come from Europe, as most manufacturing technologies are mainly based in the USA, Taiwan and South Korea. The European chip law, the EU Chips Act, therefore aims to double the European share of semiconductors in the overall market to 20%, which is essential for strengthening technological sovereignty and competitiveness. Mr. Kuhn affirmed: “HTV and HTVC GmbH, as testers and service providers in the semiconductor industry, are ready to support the EU Chips Act”.
District Administrator Christian Engelhardt’s summary of the company visit was consistently positive: “I am delighted to know that HTV is such a broad-based digital company in the semiconductor industry in the Bergstrasse district, which is making a significant contribution to digital and ecological change. The conservation and storage of components for use as spare parts only after up to 50 years also relieves the burden on our companies in the long term. On the one hand, there is no need for an expensive new investment, and on the other, we save resources through maintenance and the elimination of new production of the respective machine.”
