Through an investment of around €5 million, financed through the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR – the so-called EU bazooka funds for post pandemic economic recovery) under the Microelectronics Agenda, HFA – Henrique, Fernando & Alves SA, an electronics specialist, has bought “highly specialised production equipment in the microelectronics area in recent months and is producing a component to increase the Internet speed of American homes and businesses”, reads the statement.
This is the XFP-SFP, a fibre optic component “that is placed in home and business routers, multiplying the broadband width by five and thus increasing Internet speed”.
Thus, “using part of the investment from the PRR, achieved through Agenda Microeletrónica, HFA produces this technology in Águeda”, and the destination of the product “developed by PICadvanced S.A., another Agenda partner, is the American telecommunications multinational Verizon”.
The purchase of new equipment that has enabled the Portuguese company to produce highly sophisticated components “is not the only result of the PRR’s investment”, since the company, which will be 30 years old in 2025, “is modernising with new processes, methodologies and a new facility, which should be completed by the middle of next year”.
“The support of Agenda Microeletrónica is essential for us to increase our capacity to work on new products and provide, for example, assembly and testing services for electronics boards,” says Carlos Alves, director of HFA, quoted in a statement.
In June, the Portuguese technology company “will be part of a prospecting visit as part of the consortium to the German SMTConnect fair in Nuremberg and will take part in the MiNaPAD Forum in Grenoble (France)”.
The Microelectronics Agenda project runs from 1st January 2022 to 31st December 2024 and is co-financed by the PRR through Next Generation EU for a total eligible amount of € 6,749,3749.13.
SMTconnect is the only electronic production fair in Europe that brings together people and technologies from the areas of development, production, services and applications of microelectronic assemblies and systems.
The Microelectronics Agenda was created as part of the mobilising agendas of the Portuguese PRR with the aim of strengthening the production and innovation capacity of the national semiconductor and microelectronics industry, involving a group of 17 partners and seeking to help position Portugal at the forefront of the semiconductor management, production, distribution and recycling market, capable of properly supplying Europe and other countries on a global scale.
The Microelectronics Agenda project runs from 1st January 2022 to 31st December 2024 and is co-financed by the PRR through Next Generation EU for a total eligible amount of € 6,749,3749.13.
Platform with LUSA
