The Shibata PCB production facility, which was closed by Kyocera Corporation in March 2022, has now been purchased by Aikokiki Co, Ltd. The company previously had two PCB factories in Japan, Kasugai and Nakatsugawa - both near Nagoya. In 2013, Aikokiki established a plant in Suzhou, China. The company manufactures metal core PCBs, standard and HDI multilayer boards and core material for IC packaging substrates. The company's annual turnover is around 120 million US dollars.
In recent years, Aikokiki has become an important supplier of core material for IC packaging substrates to AT&S in Chongqing. Between 2020 and 2022, the company invested around USD 65 million in increasing the corresponding production capacity at its plant in Kasugai. The now acquired plant in Shibata, Niigata Prefecture, was operated by Toppan-NEC for many years and then sold to Kyocera. Aikokiki intends to remodel the plant with an investment of 60 million dollars in order to manufacture products for IC packaging here as well.
Customers would be AT&S, Ibiden, Kyocera and others for their high-end flip chip ball grid array (FCBGS) products. Packaging is clearly becoming an important business area for Aikokiki. The company name has a meaning similar to the current Edeka slogan ('We love food') - but related to technology and engineering (the translation of Aikokiki from Japanese to English is 'loving engineering machinery').
