CARSEM'S CHINA FACILITY BEGINS SHIPPING PRODUCTION VOLUMES

Scotts Valley, CA- July 13, 2004- Carsem, a leading provider of turnkey packaging and test services to the semiconductor industry, announced today that the Carsem-Suzhou factory recently completed their initial customer qualifications and began shipping production volumes of MLP (Micro Leadframe Package) products. The 172K sq. ft. (16K sq. m.) China facility is located in the Suzhou Industrial Park, which is in the province of Jiangsu 50 miles (80 km) west of Shanghai.

The first production parts were shipped to Semtech Corporation, a leading supplier of high-quality analog and mixed-signal semiconductor products with headquarters located in Camarillo, California.

According to John Shaw, Semtech's Vice President of Operations, "We worked closely with the Carsem-Suzhou staff and are very pleased with their performance during the qualification process. Launching the production delivery of some of our key products in China is a significant milestone for us."

The Carsem-Suzhou factory construction was completed in January this year and over 100 of the current staff of 180 employees have received extensive training in Carsem's existing Malaysian factories during the past 6 months. The current installed full turnkey assembly and test equipment is focused on the production of the entire range of MLPQ (Quad) and MLPD (Dual) packages, which is a saw-singulated version of QFN & SON compliant packages per JEDEC's MO220 and MO229 standard's. The packages are available in a wide range of body sizes as well as a "green" Pb-free option.

David Comley, Carsem's Group Managing Director, stated, "Semtech has been an excellent partner in helping us reach another major step towards meeting the tremendous growth potential of the China market as well as the rapidly increasing demand for the MLP package family. We will continue to make significant investments in both the China factory and our world wide MLP assembly and test capacity to support our customer's growing requirements."

About Carsem
Carsem is a leading provider of turnkey packaging and test services to the semiconductor industry, and offers one of the widest ranges of package & test portfolios in the world. To meet the growing demands of the telecommunications and wireless markets for smaller, faster, thermally-efficient devices, Carsem's portfolio includes several advanced technologies, such as the Micro Leadframe Package (MLP), Small Scale Ball Grid Array (SSBGA), Flip Chip On Leadframe (FCOL), and a SiP (System-in-Package) capability. Carsem also offers a full range of turnkey test services for RF, mixed-signal, linear, digital and power devices. Our factories maintain world-class quality standards having achieved SAC Level 1, ISO-9001, ISO-14001, QS-9000, TS16949 certifications, and are supported with a global network of sales and engineering support offices. Carsem is a member of the Hong Leong Group with factories located in Ipoh, Malaysia, Suzhou, China and sales offices across the USA, plus the UK. Carsem, Inc. sales headquarters is located at 269 Mt. Hermon Road, Suite 104, Scotts Valley, CA 95066, phone (831) 438-6861, fax (831) 438-6863, web site: www.carsem.com.