With the global financial markets being where they are now, it comes as a somewhat of a surprise that gift card manufacturer and packager MT&L Card Products & Fulfillment Services is one of them.

Customers are certainly sparse in stores right now, and honestly, who's thinking about buying gift cards in this time of unprecedented economic uncertainty? When the final tally is in, consumer spending for the quarter just ended will almost certainly shrink — the first quarterly decline in nearly two decades.

Regardless, here's what M&L is so excited about (via MarketWatch):

To meet customer demands for faster turnaround times and greater variety of gift card packages and programs, MT&L has increased its manufacturing space and distribution efficiency to its customers across the U.S. The expansion doubles production square footage and capacity for closed loop gift cards for its retail and restaurant customers and open loop gift cards. The facility is Tier 1 certified for Visa, MasterCard and Discover prepaid card packaging, warehousing and distribution.

According to the manufacturer's vice president of sales and marketing, "This expansion provides us with more versatility and flexibility to adapt to customer requirements and allows for greater diversity in the types of solutions we can provide for our customers. We now have more than 100 different kinds of packaging styles and formats we can offer."

Like MT&L, semiconductor makers are also making flexibility a mainstay of their manufacturing procedures.

Take NEC Electronics, for instance. The global semiconductor provider this week announced it will expand production using a 0.15-micron process on its new 8 in. wafer line in Roseville, Calif.

According to a company statement, the 8 in. line was created in response to demand for its 0.15-micron-based products from designers using semiconductors in consumer devices such as digital cameras, memory sticks and mobile and hand-held products, as well as from customers in the automotive industry.

The 8 in. wafer line will reach full production in March 2009. It hit full production on its current capacity in April.

In another development involving semiconductor facilities, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. yesterday announced it is spinning off its manufacturing operations as part of a sweeping plan "to address the growing demand for independent, leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing."

With funding from the Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC) of Abu Dhabi, the new venture The Foundry Company will take over AMD manufacturing facilities, including a planned "capacity expansion" in Germany. Also, the new joint venture hopes to begin construction on a new state-of-the-art facility in Saratoga County, New York, creating more than 1,465 highly skilled, advanced manufacturing jobs and stimulating the creation of thousands more local jobs. "Once operational, the New York facility will be the only independently managed leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing foundry in the United States," according to an AMD statement.

ATIC is an investment company wholly owned by the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. Last year, the Abu Dhabi government's investment arm, the Mubadala Development Co., took an 8.1 percent stake in AMD.

Taken at face value, AMD's announcement would appear to be a typical play at global expansion. It's the funding-from-foreign-investment-groups part that lends an air of contention and perhaps desperation to this news.

The Associated Press perceives the development this way:

For years, Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s scrappy image was best summed up by an insult that founder Jerry Sanders lobbed against rivals: "Real men have fabs." Sanders meant that while many chip companies design semiconductors and outsource the manufacturing, AMD enjoyed the relatively rare advantage of owning its factories, known as fabrication plants, or fabs. Times have changed, though, and now so has AMD's commitment to hanging onto those facilities, which have become a cash drain on a struggling company.

"The move should help shore up AMD's finances, but it also amounts to a recognition that AMD can't compete dollar-for-dollar on manufacturing against Silicon Valley rival Intel Corp., the world's biggest semiconductor company," AP says.

Will ATIC's five-year, $8.1 billion contribution for upgrading the Germany facility and building a new factory in New York work? Time will tell. In the meantime, as Forbes notes, AMD proves "there is plenty of capital available during the credit crunch, provided that you've got the growth potential and price appeal to earn it."

There are plenty of manufacturers out there that may be green with envy when they see the deep pockets that AMD is connected to.

Even though Konarka Technologies is relatively green, the solar plastic film manufacturer likely isn't envious of AMD. At least not according to recent news that the company plans to commercialize its Power Plastic® material that converts light to energy.

In fact, according to a company statement, the material producer just opened the largest roll-to-roll flexible thin film solar manufacturing facility in the world.

"This facility has state-of-the-art printing capabilities that are ready for full operation, with the future potential to produce over a gigawatt of flexible plastic solar modules per year," commented Howard Berke, executive chairman and co-founder of Konarka. "Our technical leadership and innovation in flexible thin film solar, along with this facility's capabilities of producing in excess of 10 million square meters of material per year, will allow us to produce Power Plastic for indoor, portable, outdoor and building integrated applications."

Resources

MT&L Doubles Gift Card Manufacturing Capacity, Improves Distribution Capabilities
PRNewswire/MarketWatch, Oct. 7, 2008

NEC Electronics America Expands Capacity on New Eight-Inch Line at Wafer Fab in Roseville, California
BusinessWire/MarketWatch, Oct. 6, 2008

AMD and Advanced Technology Investment Company of Abu Dhabi to Create Leading-Edge Semiconductor Manufacturing Company
Advanced Micro Devices, Oct. 7, 2008

Fabless Future: Struggling AMD Spins off Factories
by Jordan Robertson
The Associated Press, Oct. 7, 2008

AMD Beats Crunch With Abu Dhabi Cash
by Maurna Desmond
Forbes, Oct. 7, 2007

Konarka Opens World's Largest Roll-to-Roll Thin Film Solar Manufacturing Facility with One Gigawatt Nameplate Capacity
Konarka, Oct. 7, 2008