CLM Search

Happy Thanksgiving to our US Network! 🍂🦃 Today, we want to extend our gratitude to our colleagues, clients, partners, and candidates across the United States. Thank you for your collaboration, your trust, and the continued relationships that make our work meaningful. We’re proud to support such an innovative and hard-working community across the manufacturing, energy and technology sectors. From all of us at CLM Search, we wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with rest, reflection, and time with the people who matter most. Happy Thanksgiving! 🍁

🚀 2025 is an Exciting Year for Automotive Manufacturing! The industry is moving fast and there’s never been a better time to be part of it: ⚡ EV Expansion: more electric vehicles hitting production lines 🤖 Autonomous & ADAS Tech: smarter, safer vehicles 🌿 Sustainable Manufacturing: greener plants, recycled materials 📶 Industry 4.0 & Digitalization: IoT, AI, and smart factories 🛠️ Supply Chain Resilience: on-shore sourcing and flexibility 🚖 Mobility as a Service: shifting from ownership to shared fleets 🔐 Cybersecurity: protecting connected vehicles With all these updates, 2025 is a great time to work in automotive manufacturing! New technologies, plant expansions, and innovative programs mean more opportunities for operations, engineering, plant leadership, and supply chain talent. #CLMSearch #AutomotiveManufacturing #Operations #PlantManager #ManufacturingLeadership #TalentAcquisition #USManufacturing #AutoIndustry #EV #HybridVehicles #ContinuousImprovement #LeanManufacturing #WorkforceDevelopment #ProductionLeadership https://lnkd.in/gr9bnR-6

I'm happy to share that I am working on an exclusive large-scale project within a major player in the battery energy storage space.   The project covers a series of business-critical hires x15:   Initial project scope includes: 🔹 Head of Product Management 🔹 Director of Application Engineering 🔹 Director of Sales (California) 🔹 Director of Sales (Central) 🔹 Technical Project manager 🔹 Supply Chain Manager 🔹Engineering roles include SW & Data, Electrical, Execution and Mechanical.   With retained terms agreed and a full roadmap in place, this project will help our client scale safely, efficiently, and at pace as they expand their US footprint in the battery energy storage market.   If any of these opportunities are relevant for you or your network, please reach out to discuss in more detail.

Before I joined the executive recruitment industry, my understanding of Fujifilm Electronic Materials didn’t stretch past their cameras. So I always find it interesting to see how far the company has evolved - especially in areas that rarely make mainstream headlines. Fujifilm recently announced the completion of a new development and evaluation building at their Shizuoka Factory, supporting the growth of their semiconductor materials business. A few things stood out to me: 1) The facility includes upgraded cleanrooms and evaluation equipment to help accelerate development of materials for advanced lithography and next-generation semiconductor processes. 2) They’re incorporating AI image recognition to improve inspection accuracy; it is a practical example of AI being used in manufacturing quality control. 3) A digital transformation (DX) department has been set up on-site to expand the use of digital tools across production. This seems like a simple step, but is often a underutilized potentiality in headcount planning. The building also reflects some thoughtful BCP planning, including seismic isolation and elevating the cleanroom to account for flood risk. What’s notable is the scale of their continued investment: semiconductor materials sales have grown significantly since FY2021, and Fujifilm plans to invest over ¥100B more through FY2026 to keep up with demand, particularly in areas linked to AI and advanced packaging (the two fastest growing hiring verticals for CLM Search at present). It’s a good reminder that many companies we think we “know” often have entire businesses behind the scenes that are driving real innovation. In Fujifilm’s case, their contribution is to a critical space of the global semiconductor supply chain. #CLM #Materials #Packaging #AI #Manufacturing References: https://lnkd.in/eiP-PVja

🌱 Volvo Expands U.S. Manufacturing with Next-Gen Hybrid Coming to South Carolina 🚗⚡ Volvo Cars is investing in its Ridgeville, SC plant, adding a new hybrid model alongside current production of the EX90 EV and Polestar 3. This marks an important step as Volvo reassesses its “all-electric by 2030” plan and shows a continued commitment to the U.S. market. Key Highlights: 🔹 XC60 production begins in 2026 at Ridgeville 🔹 New hybrid model coming by 2030, tailored for U.S. customers 🇺🇸 🔹 Mixed EV and hybrid production keeps Volvo flexible for market demands 🌿 🔹 Confirms a long-term commitment to U.S. manufacturing and workforce This is an exciting time to be in the staffing and operations world! The plant expansions and new programs mean more opportunities, more innovation, and more ways to connect great talent with high-impact roles! #CLMSearch #AutomotiveManufacturing #Operations #PlantManager #ManufacturingLeadership #TalentAcquisition #USManufacturing #AutoIndustry #EV #HybridVehicles #ContinuousImprovement #LeanManufacturing #WorkforceDevelopment #ProductionLeadership https://lnkd.in/gu4ThM7y

Europe’s €43B Chips Act Promised Supply-Chain Security and Technological Sovereignty: The Issue of Upstream Vulnerability. Despite new fabs in Dresden, Catania, and Leixlip, Europe’s semiconductor resilience is still constrained by three structural issues: 1) Materials & mature-node supply chain bottlenecks Europe’s industrial and automotive sectors rely heavily on mature nodes (40–180 nm), as well as specialized materials for power semiconductors and SiC device production. Most global capex is still going into sub-10-nm technologies, leaving the mature-node and materials supply chain - already concentrated in Asia - with limited scalability and visibility. A look towards Nexperia & their complex relationship with the Dutch government this week serves as evidence. Packaging capacity is also heavily concentrated outside Europe, further exposing the region to external choke points. STATS ChipPAC/JCET Group & Amkor Technology, Inc. are prime examples of how the U.S & Asia dominate this space. Intel Corporation may also find their way back through expanding AP capacity. 2) Talent shortages... especially in high-cost hubs Germany, faces severe engineering and technician shortages, compounded by high labor and operational costs. This limits how quickly fabs can ramp and constrains Europe’s ability to localize more of the materials and back-end ecosystem. The workforce gap increasingly threatens Europe’s competitiveness relative to Asian and U.S. ecosystems that scale faster and cheaper. The US are having similar issues, which may be heightened by H1-B policy adaptation. 3) High-cost manufacturing environments slow resilience Even with subsidies, Europe’s fabs face significant cost disadvantages in energy, materials, and skilled labor. Without addressing these structural cost pressures, Europe risks attracting fabs without building the equally critical upstream ecosystem (materials, packaging, equipment talent) needed for real independence. Europe isn’t suffering from a fab shortage. It's suffering from a preparedness, transparency, and ecosystem-coordination gap. To build real resilience, Europe needs: - Early and consistent demand transparency across OEMs, Tier suppliers, distributors, and fabs - Long-term agreements with realistic volume bands - Dual qualification of suppliers and back-end partners - Better internal semiconductor management across purchasing, engineering, and operations - Coordinated strategies to strengthen materials supply chains and skilled talent pipelines, not just wafer capacity Europe’s next semiconductor crisis won’t be caused by geopolitics; it will be caused by under-communicated demand, stressed materials supply chains, a shortage of specialized talent, and the high-cost burden slowing expansion in hubs like Germany. This requires transparent planning, ecosystem collaboration, and the upstream capabilities that truly determine resilience. #CLM #Semiconductors #USA #EU #ChipsAct

For our Morocco network 🇲🇦 Our Managing Director, Taylor Nathaniel, will be in Morocco, based out of our Rabat office next week, meeting a number of our key partners. If you too, are planning expansion across the MENA region in 2026 and beyond, please get in touch to arrange a meeting.

Weekly Round Up: What's Happening in Silicon? A fast-moving week across semiconductors, AI policy, and sustainable innovation: U.S. policy and global trade: • The administration is reportedly slowing plans for broad semiconductor-import tariffs to avoid reigniting U.S. - China trade tensions. • Up to 35,000 NVIDIA Blackwell chips were cleared for export to the UAE and Saudi Arabia under strict security requirements. • The House introduced the SEMI Investment Act, extending the 35% tax credit to U.S. semiconductor material producers. • The president aims to block state-level AI regulation, despite 80% of Americans supporting government oversight. • The Netherlands paused its Nexperia intervention following constructive talks with China, which warned of supply-chain “turbulence.” Industry Momentum: • GlobalFoundries announced three major moves: acquiring Advanced Micro Foundry, partnering with Navitas Semiconductor on U.S. GaN manufacturing, and collaborating with BAE Systems on radiation-hardened space chips. Market Insights: • Deloitte predicts 75% of companies may adopt agentic AI by 2026, highlights chiplets as a 2026 geopolitical chokepoint, and expects EDA workflows to be increasingly burdened by export-control disclosures. Sustainability Becomes a Design Parameter: • imec is redefining the semiconductor playbook by adding “E” for environmental impact to the traditional PPAC metrics. Through imec.netzero, engineers will gain access to bottom-up LCA models for processes like lithography and etching; they enable carbon-aware decisions before a wafer is ever fabricated. Sustainability built in: • Under the EU Chips Act, imec’s NanoIC pilot line is emerging as a bridge between research and industrialisation - with a new emphasis on sustainable process flows for advanced logic, 3D integration, and photonics. Engineers gain early access to technologies that meet both performance and environmental benchmarks. Strategic partnerships shaping the future: • imec’s five-year collaboration with ASML integrates EUV and DUV tools to advance sub-2nm patterning while reducing lithography’s footprint - driving new sustainability-aware design rules and DFM practices. You can add to this the continued overperformance of AI related stock, and advances in Google's own LLMs (and the underpinning TPU chips underneath). Once again, a heavy week with regards to cutting edge semiconductor innovation & it's application in the real world. #AI #Data #Semiconductor #CLM #Acquisition References: - https://lnkd.in/e3PNAvVe - https://lnkd.in/e9jVzXvq - https://lnkd.in/eWfYpkri