Xilinx performs well in Ireland

THE Irish subsidiary of the US electronics company, Xilinx, has had sales of more than $50 million (£31 million) in its first 10 months of operation, according to the company's chief executive, Mr Wim Roelandts.

Mr Roelandts, who was in Dublin for the official opening of the new £20 million factory on the Naas Road in west Dublin, said that results from the Irish plant had surpassed Xilinx's expectations.

Xilinx employs just over loo people at City west and plans to recruit an additional 200 staff over the next f6ur years. The company makes programmable semiconductor chips, and also produces the software needed to customise chips to particular customer needs.

Xilinx's chips are used by a wide range of industrial sectors, including computer peripherals, telecommunications, military hardware, aerospace and instrumentation.

The Dublin facility exports to Europe and Asia, and is about to begin selling to Japan. "Our objective is to achieve close to 50 per cent of corporate revenues from international markets," Mr Roelandts said.

Xilink, which was founded in 1984, had record sales of $520 million last year in a worldwide market worth about $1.6 billion. Mr Roelandts estimates that the market for programmable chips, which was initially developed by Xilinx, could be worth $3.8 billion within four years.

Mr Roelandts said that the opening of the Dublin plant was a significant milestone" for the company as it was its first manufacturing venture outside the United States.

The company is also establishing a research and development facility at City west which will work on producing a new family of products which can be sold by Xilinx worldwide.