Sipex Announces RoHS Compliance for All Production-Released Packaging

MILPITAS, Calif., March 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Sipex Corporation , today announced that with increased environmental compliance efforts, and to meet EU Reduction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive 2002/95/EC, it is now in compliance with this directive for all of its standard packaging when ordered as lead-free. All Sipex lead-free standard packages are now certified compliant to the European directive beating the June 2006 deadline. This directive requires that lead-free packaging contain less than 1,000ppm for the top five hazardous packaging substances and 100ppm for Cadmium.

Customers who require lead-free RoHS-compliant packaging can order the standard part numbers with a "-L" suffix. The use of this suffix, instead of a product date code, was designed to make it easier for the Customer to control the hazardous substance content of the product they receive. This new packaging identifier reduces confusion and increases order fulfillment accuracy, in addition to providing the assurance of chemical content for the Customer.

"Sipex made the decision to add the -L suffix to its lead-free packaging based on Customer input. This will make ordering lead-free product as clear cut as possible, and ensure that Customers are receiving the product type they require," said Fred Claussen, Vice President of Corporate Quality and Reliability for Sipex.

Sipex began its lead-free production program over three years ago, leading many of its competitors in the transition. In order to better serve its Customers, all packaging information is available on the Sipex corporate website: http://www.sipex.com/ . In keeping with its corporate environmental mission, and in support of industry regulatory and Customer compliance requirements, Sipex has achieved ISO14001 certification, and has been named both a Sony Green Partner and Samsung ECO partner.

About Sipex Corporation

Sipex Corporation is a semiconductor company that designs, manufactures and markets high performance, value-added analog integrated circuits (IC). Sipex serves the broad analog signal processing market with interface, power management and optical storage ICs for use in automotive, portable products, computing, communications, and networking infrastructure markets. The company is headquartered in Milpitas, California with additional offices in Belgium, Canada, China, Germany, Japan and Taiwan. Sipex sells products direct and through its distribution channels. For more information about Sipex, visit http://www.sipex.com/.

For additional information, contact: Fred Claussen, VP Corporate Quality Tel: [phone] Email: [e-mail]