Big is better for NZ silicon chip king

By SIMON COLLINS

An Auckland entrepreneur who has cornered the world market for the biggest Machine used to make silicon chips, Bill Buckley, has been made an honorary fellow of the Institution of Professional Engineers (Ipenz).

"I'm a tradesman. I believe that today I'm now an engineer," Buckley told the engineers at a black-tie awards ceremony at their annual convention in Wellington.

A former Auckland University scientist who has lived in the United States for the past 30 years, Dr Hilton Glavich, told the convention that if Buckley were to disappear tomorrow, it would be "a serious blow" to the world's silicon chip industry.

Buckley and Glavich have collaborated since Buckley's small engineering workshop built machinery for Glavich's work as a doctoral student in the mid-1960s on sources of positively charged atoms, or ions.

Today Buckley Systems in Mt Wellington is the only large-scale manufacturer of ion implanters - machines which purify beams of ions by sending them at up to twice the speed of light through a narrow slit which seives out all atoms of the wrong atomic weight.

The machines weigh between four and 30 tonnes and are airfreighted to semiconductor manufacturers around the world.

When Auckland Airport was closed briefly during an eruption of Mt Ruapehu a few years ago, Buckley had 100 tonnes of machinery worth several million dollars waiting to go out to chip plants.

"They were desperate for it. It didn't look good," he said.

"A lot of them are saying to me, 'If you want us to keep using you, you'll have to get a plant up here [in the US].' "

But he has chosen to stay in New Zealand, partly because "I love the place" and partly because he has seen competitors start up in the US and elsewhere, and he has seen them all fail.

"What their problem is I think could be my problem too if I went over there," he said.

"It could be higher costs. But some of it is the fact that they are that far ahead of us that they rely on the computer to do the job instead of knowledge.

"I've found that those guys in the blue overalls that I work beside - that's where I get the technology.

"If you can get a guy on the shop floor who can work the computers and do the technology, they can work a machine so much better than a guy who hasn't got the calibre.

"So I spend a lot of time with the guys in the overalls and tell them they are doing a bloody good job, and a lot of them get bigger pay than the guys sitting in the offices."

Over the years, Buckley has come up with "a lot of different ideas" for ion implantation, and has gradually earned the confidence of chip makers.

"We have got to a point now where unless it's a Buckley beam line, they are doubtful whether it's going to work," he said.

He did not know what his company was worth, but said he was the biggest customer of BHP's Australian steel mills, and he estimated that he never put a new product on the market without spending at least $35 million. He employs 130 people.

"It's a very fickle business to operate in," he said.

"I can pick up orders worth $1 million a day for three weeks on end, and it's panicking you - how can you get the jobs done?

"But most companies work on the principle that they have to get the funding to do a project, then when they finally get the funding they want to spend it and don't want to wait.

"So you have to be pretty quick to get something to them so they can get on to the next stage of their research."

As well as ion implanters, Buckley built the keel for the NZ yacht that won the last America's Cup, a job he is repeating this year.

He is now developing a machine that could cut the cost of flat-screen technology.

Despite the US recession and the shock of September 11, Buckley said orders for the ion implanters were already picking up again.

"Everyone is predicting that we'll have to double production on last year's records," he said.

"We are gearing up now for the upturn and trying to find a new market.

"The auto industry is a big user of chips, I don't know how many there are in a motorcar today, but it's got to be astronomical."