BOC Edwards Announces Major On-Site Services Contract Awards; Outsourcing of On-Site Equipment Support Services Now Becoming Industry Standard.

SAN FRANCISCO -- BOC Edwards, a major provider of site services, materials, and equipment to the semiconductor industry, announced today that it has recently been awarded new long-term, multi-scope service contracts at eight leading microprocessor, flash and memory chip manufacturing facilities in the United States and Europe. These contract awards follow the recently-announced substantial on-site service successes in Taiwan, covering both materials management and equipment support services. These new service contracts are expected to yield approximately US$15 million in incremental services revenue per year for BOC Edwards.

"We are seeing a large increase in the number of customers who elect to outsource support activities for wafer fab manufacturing such as the supply chain management of chamber components, sub-fab repairable assets and materials logistics," said Neels Kriek, managing director, materials and services, BOC Edwards. "Our broad scope of offerings, covering many services not currently offered in the industry, has given us the opportunity to develop flexible, yet innovative solutions that allow customers to reallocate existing resources and concentrate on their core business."

The on-site contracts cover multiple scopes such as parts cleaning, kit management, coating and refurbishment, vacuum/abatement equipment maintenance and operations, and total materials management services supported by dedicated on-site and off-site teams.

"The award of these long-term, on- and off-site contacts demonstrates BOC Edwards' commitment to proactively work with our customers to significantly lower their direct and indirect materials costs and increase their operational equipment effectiveness (OEE)," said Kriek. Due to our unmatched global services infrastructure we are well positioned to offer cost effective and field-proven services solutions that ultimately result in decreased tool preventative maintenance frequency and costs while enhancing productivity."

More than 1,600 employees currently work at BOC Edwards services centers and at customer fabs to support over 200 customer sites around the world.

Editor Background

BOC Edwards, part of The BOC Group (NYSE:BOX, LSE:BOC), is a leading supplier of materials, process-enabling subsystems and services to fabs and OEMs involved in the manufacture of microelectronics devices. Serving two million customers in more than 50 countries, The BOC Group is one of the largest and most global of the world's leading gases companies, with annual sales of GBP 4.6 billion (more than US$8 billion) in 2004. Information on the BOC Group can be accessed by visiting the Group web site, www.boc.com. Specific information on BOC Edwards can be found at www.bocedwards.com. E-mail inquiries can be sent to [e-mail].