Europe’s Advanced Packaging: Progress, Players, And The Road Ahead

Fifty years of Semicon Europa set a fitting backdrop for a conversation that feels both celebratory and unsentimental about the state of advanced packaging in Europe. We walk the floor in Munich and pull together a story that spans chemical metrology, panel plating, glass substrates, thermal materials, logistics resilience, and the push from R&D to production—plus a heartfelt goodbye.

Dena Mitchell, Nova opens the curtain on chemical metrology for electroplating, showing how bath health drives TSV fill, hybrid bond grain structure, and environmental wins through longer bath life. Sally Ann Henry, ACM Research, explains why horizontal panel electroplating can deliver better uniformity than vertical as panel-level packaging grows. Thomas Uhrmann, EV Group zooms out to the strategy: Europe’s strength in pilot lines and research consortia, the urgency to materialize large-scale packaging fabs, and how the EU Chips Act is knitting packaging into every node from photonics to logic.

Henkel's Ram Trichur takes on thermals, from kilowatt-class data center processors with backside power delivery to mobile’s shift from package-on-package to side-by-side for exposed die cooling, and the heat challenges inside HBM stacks. Comet's Isabella Drolz steps into glass panel territory with TGV inspection at 610 x 610 mm, aligning tools, standards, and timelines toward late-decade ramps. Martin Wynaendts van Resandt explains how
Lab14 brings agility with direct-write lithography for large substrates and optical interconnect masters—speeding iteration and trimming mask overhead as co-packaged optics advances. Jim Garstka, Shellback Semiconductor, talks about its Hydrozone product that is finding traction in photo mask cleaning. 

We also get practical about moving all this innovation: Barry O'Dowd and Robin Knopf, of Kuehne+Nagel, detail how Europe’s packaging supply chains remain global, and how sea-air blends can cut cost and time for non-sensitive, high-volume flows while building resilience against disruptions. ASE's Patricia MacLeod, Christophe Zinck, and Bradford Factor tie it together with automotive realities—centralized compute, heterogeneous integration, reliability constraints—and the enduring role of MEMS and sensors to feed the brain of the car.

It’s a grounded, forward-looking journey through the technologies and decisions that will determine whether Europe turns its R&D leadership into production momentum. Listen for clear takeaways, candid perspectives, and a final toast to the community that made the 3D InCites Podcast possible.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Live From Semicon Europa: Opening
• 1:06 Nova On Chemical Metrology For Plating
• 7:16 Why Bath Health Drives TSV And Hybrid Bonds
• 8:58 ACM’s Panel Plating And EU R&D Reality
• 13:06 Horizontal vs Vertical Panel Plating
• 15:43 EV Group On Europe’s Packaging Gap
• 19:12 EU Chips Act And Pilot Lines
• 21:18 Henkel’s Thermal Materials For AI And Mobile
• 27:39 Comet Joins Glass Panel Consortium
• 33:17 Glass Panels, TGV Inspection, And Timing
• 36:48 Lab14’s Direct-Write And Optics Push
• 41:25 Shellback’s Cleaning, Masks, And Momentum
• 46:10 ASE On Automotive Chiplets And MEMS
• 51:18 Farewell Reflections And Closing