February 20, 2003 - Silica Is Number One for Distributor Performance at Plexus

Slough -- Specialist semiconductor distributor Silica has secured the '2002 UK Distribution Partner of the Year' Award from Plexus, a world leader in the electronics manufacturing services industry. The award was judged against a range of performance indicators that cover key issues such as pricing, delivery and customer service.

Plexus is renowned for its rigorous vendor management programme, which seeks to combine the lowest possible pricing with optimum standards of supply chain performance. Paul Blenkinsop, Strategic Purchasing Manager at Plexus, said: "Silica's success reflects their complete commitment to understanding our business requirements and maintaining a true partnership with Plexus at both local and corporate level. Our global relationship with their parent company Avnet goes back many years, but there is no doubt that the creation of Silica has made a significant difference to their performance in the UK."

Commenting on Silica's success, Mike Mernagh, UK Sales Director, Supply Chain Services, said: "To receive this award from such an important global CEM is clear evidence that Silica is delivering genuine commercial benefits for our customers. Demonstrating consistently high performance standards in areas such as quote response time, on-time delivery and quality of shipment is testimony not only to the robustness of our trading systems, but also the commitment of the entire Silica team."

According to Phil Waggott, Silica's account manager for Plexus, "Silica provides a range of commercial and logistical support for Plexus, including the use of sophisticated EDI forecasting and ordering tools, and the employment of a dedicated internal sales and customer support executive on-site at the company's Kelso manufacturing facility."

Offering a service portfolio that embraces the entire product development process, Plexus is a truly global operation, with design, engineering and manufacturing centres spread across three continents. In the UK, these facilities are in Kelso and Livingston in Scotland and Malden, Essex.

Silica, a division of Avnet Electronics Marketing EMEA (Europe, Middle-East, Africa), is a highly specialised semiconductor distributor. Silica has sales & marketing offices throughout Europe and provides a broad portfolio of semiconductor products and solutions from world leading suppliers to all market segments in the electronics industry. The company's Web site is located at www.silica.com.

Serving customers in 63 countries, Avnet Electronics Marketing is the largest operating group of Phoenix, Ariz.-based Avnet, Inc. (NYSE:AVT). Avnet Electronics Marketing markets, inventories and adds value to electronic components and provides world-class supply-chain management and engineering design services. Avnet, with fiscal year 2002 sales of $8.9 billion (year ended June 28, 2002), is the world's largest distributor of semiconductors, interconnect, passive and electromechanical components, embedded subsystems and enterprise computing products from leading manufacturers.