Linde Israeli distributor receives Supplier of the Year Award from TowerJazz

Murray Hill, New Jersey, U.S. – Gastech, Ltd., a Linde North America distributor in Israel, has received a Supplier of the Year Award from TowerJazz, the global specialty foundry leader and manufacturer of integrated circuits for customers around the world.

Linde North America is a member of The Linde Group, a leading global gases and engineering company. Gastech, located in Kfar Saba, Israel, was established in 1996 to supply specialty gases and chemicals to the growing semiconductor business in the country and has become a major supplier to TowerJazz’s facilities in Migdal Ha’emek and to several other semiconductor manufacturers. The company also supplies specialty gases to other manufacturers in Israel, including those in the pharmaceutical, agricultural, metals and chemical industries, as well as universities and research laboratories.

“It is a great honor for Gastech to receive this award,” said Yoni Levi, general manager of Gastech. “It is a huge accomplishment to be singled out by a company that has manufacturing capabilities worldwide. Every person in the company shares this award and takes pride in contributing to the success of TowerJazz, a leading global specialty foundry.”

Gastech supplies TowerJazz with more than 15 gas and chemical products, which are produced in the U.S. by Linde North America. Among the major products are boron trifluoride, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and silane.

Gastech operates a just-in-time warehousing and distribution facility in Ramat Hovav, Israel, that provides inventory management and logistics services to TowerJazz to assure availability of products as needed, thus maximizing uptime at its facilities. These services, coupled with Gastech’s ability to handle the complicated import/export activities associated with electronic gases in that part of the world, has made Gastech the major supplier of gases and chemicals to TowerJazz. Gastech also provides Hazmat and safety training programs for the safe handling and distribution of the gases and chemical products for TowerJazz’s facilities.

“We congratulate Gastech on this award for its delivery of excellent products and customer service to TowerJazz,” said Michael Elron, TowerJazz’s vice president of materials and supply chain management. “Gastech’s ability to deliver products on time and on spec is very important to the production efficiency of our fabs. Their dedication to our success is much appreciated and we are pleased to continue our first-rate relationship.”


About The Linde Group
The Linde Group is a world leading gases and engineering company with almost 50,000 employees working in around 100 countries worldwide. In the 2008 financial year it achieved sales of EUR 12.7 billion (USD 15.9 billion). The strategy of The Linde Group is geared towards sustainable earnings-based growth and focuses on the expansion of its international business with forward-looking products and services. Linde acts responsibly towards its shareholders, business partners, employees, society and the environment – in every one of its business areas, regions and locations across the globe. Linde is committed to technologies and products that unite the goals of customer value and sustainable development.
For more information, see The Linde Group online at http://www.linde.com

About TowerJazz
Tower Semiconductor Ltd. (NASDAQ: TSEM, TASE: TSEM), the global specialty foundry leader and its fully owned U.S. subsidiary Jazz Semiconductor, operate collectively under the brand name TowerJazz, manufacturing integrated circuits with geometries ranging from 1.0 to 0.13-micron. TowerJazz provides industry leading design enablement tools to allow complex designs to be achieved quickly and more accurately and offers a broad range of customizable process technologies including SiGe, BiCMOS, Mixed-Signal and RFCMOS, CMOS Image Sensor, Power Management (BCD), and Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) as well as MEMS capabilities. To provide world-class customer service, TowerJazz maintains two manufacturing facilities in Israel and one in the U.S. with additional capacity available in China through manufacturing partnerships.
For more information, please visit http://www.towerjazz.com