Industrial computer manufacturer Texas Microsystems Inc is looking to expand its European operations with a distribution centre and manufacturing facility. The Netherlands or Ireland are the favoured locations, closely followed by Germany. Texas Micro Europe BV, Almere, the Netherlands, says it expects to make the final decision early in the new year. The $35m-a-year Houston company is best known for its ruggedised personal computers. It is currently negotiating with the US Army to co-develop a hand-held personal computer with radio communications features for use in the field. It also assembles hardSparc ruggedised Sparcstations and starts production of what it terms a Fault-Tolerant Systems Architecture FTSA personal computer in January. The FTSA machines are MS-DOS-compatible and are aimed at the increasing number of organisations that need to run crucial applications on personal computers. At a basic $7,000 for the bottom-end 80386SX machine, the Texas Micro technology does not come cheap, but then, argues Texas Micro Europe manager Jan van de Kraats, fault-tolerance never has. As for the proposed assembly and component facility, van de Kraats is torn between Ireland’s lower corporate tax rate and the geographical advantages of the Netherlands. Van de Kraats is looking for an 70,000 square foot facility that would be expected to provide employment for 250 people within five years. When Tulip Computers BV showed interest in setting up a production facility in Ireland, the Dutch government recently lured it back to Den Bosch, although whether it can do the same for a US company remains to be seen.
