Europe’s Advanced Packaging Gap: Fraunhofer, Swissbit Target the Missing Middle

Low-volume production sits between research and mass manufacturing. Europe needs an industrial model to fill the gap.

By Pat Brans, EE Times | October 13, 2026

Europe has no shortage of semiconductor research. The harder problem often begins after the prototype works.

A company may need an advanced packaging process for a specialized product, but only at volumes of tens, hundreds, or thousands of units. That can be too much for a research organization to support indefinitely and far too little to interest a conventional high-volume outsourced semiconductor assembly and test provider.

Rolf Aschenbrenner, deputy director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration (IZM), sees that gap regularly. “Companies come to us because their volume is too low to get access to advanced packaging,” he told EE Times. “We can help with prototypes, and in some cases we can also do small-volume manufacturing.”

To read the full article, click here