The company "IRZ-Photon", part of the group "Izhevsk Radio Plant", organized in Udmurtia the serial production of electronic modules for cellular base stations and telecommunications equipment. The total investment in the new production amounted to about 200 million rubles, of which 157 million rubles were provided in the form of a preferential loan by the federal Industrial Development Fund (IDF). This was reported to "Pervy Technichesky" by the IDF.
Thanks to the loan funds, the company purchased modern equipment that allows producing up to 83.5 thousand modules per year. Automation of key operations increased the productivity of surface mounting lines from 50 to 250 thousand electronic components per hour. Now the plant can manufacture large-sized products — the maximum size of the printed circuit board reaches 510×460 mm.
The products are intended for 2G and 4G base stations, Wi-Fi equipment, systems for eliminating "white spots" of coverage on roads and in sparsely populated areas, as well as for security, navigation and photo-video recording complexes.
The share of imported electronic modules in the Russian market is about 74% — mainly supplies from Asia, primarily from China. The implementation of the "IRZ-Photon" project is focused on reducing dependence on foreign supplies: it is expected that the share of domestic products will grow from 26% to 29%.
The main customer is IRZ-Telecom, and the capacity is also focused on contract manufacturing for third-party manufacturers.
If earlier Russian companies often placed contract manufacturing of printed circuit boards and electronic modules abroad, then in recent years there has been a steady trend towards localization of such production within the country, despite the still high share of imports.
