Ultratech is building its global headquarters in Singapore to serve its Asian customer. It will invest up to US$250 million in its Singapore operations in the next five years.

According to Arthur Zafiropaulo, chief executive officer of Ultratech, they plans to start manufacturing in the first quarter of 2011, and in the second half, to ramp up our high-brightness LED and our lithography products.

Ultratech makes systems used in semiconductor devices and high-brightness LEDs.And LED lighting will be a key growth driver for Ultratech in the future.

Going forward, its Asian contributions should increase to 75 per cent of its global business from 65 per cent currently.

Arthur Zafiropaulo disclosed that  they have not started shipping anything out of this facility and they are increasing our space by 30 percent because they are looking forward to growing faster in the engineering and R&D area.

It’s said that China contributes 46 per cent of global LED sales, which is expected to hit US$18.4 billion by 2014.

Therefore Mr Zafiropaulo added that  " Demand for high-brightness LED, specifically in China, has been overwhelming for us. We need to get more capacity in this facility, based on the China interest level."

"We expect to transfer all our lithography from California to here by the end of the year. And so we expect that will be the major part of our sales in this certain market."

In addition, Ultratech also intends to increase its profit margin by 5 per cent due to the lower material costs in Singapore.