Irishman dubbed ‘Mr China’ raises US$26m

23 Feb 2011

A company founded by Corkman Liam Casey and headquartered in Cork with substantial manufacturing operations in China has raised US$26m in venture capital investment as part of efforts to keep up with demand in the booming Chinese electronics market.

PCH International, which has just been covered today on TechCrunch by the esteemed Michael Arrington, no less, designs and manufactures electronic products in partnership with major consumer electronics brands.

The company, which is profitable, reported revenues of US$400m last year.

Global supply chain

The company has operations in Shenzhen, China. Founded in 1996, PCH International made a strategic decision to transition away from electronic component sourcing to providing global supply chain management services to the consumer electronics, personal computer, medical devices, telecoms and other technology industries.

The latest investment of US$26m comes from Triangle Peak Partners and Cross Creek Capital. It follows a previous funding round of US$21m in 2008 from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and Focus Ventures.

Arrington, who clearly likes Casey’s “crazy-unintelligible Cork accent” was told by Casey that the company needed to raise the capital to open new facilities in China to keep up with burgeoning demand in the Chinese domestic market.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com