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Southampton Photonics plans 200 staff
June 12, 2000
A new UK-based start-up, which will design and manufacture fibre-optic components for the global telecommunicationsmarket, has attracted first-round funding of $55 million (£37 million), one of the largest private investments in the industry to date. Southampton Photonics will create 200 high-tech jobs in the UK during the next 18 months and be based at a purpose-built 25,000 square-foot development and production facility in the Chilworth Science Park near Southampton. The new jobs will consist of professional engineers and manufacturing personnel, as well as sales and marketing staff.
Southampton Photonics, with its roots in the world-renownedOptoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at the University of Southampton, will operate on a global basis. In addition to building the UK operation, the company will establish design, production and sales facilities in California.
The company will base its initial product range on technology licensed from the University of Southampton. Much of it was developed and patented by the founders and employees of Southampton Photonics whilst working at the ORC, one of the world's foremost optical communication research laboratories, where, for 35 years, scientists have developed technologies that are critical to optical communications networks. Southampton Photonics will benefit from an on-going alliance with the ORC: in addition to its significant in-house product and technology development efforts, the company will continue to licence key know-how and further patent portfolios from the ORC.
Don Spalinger, President of Southampton Photonics, commented, "This is an exciting new venture. The global communications market is beingdriven by Internet traffic, currently doubling every 100 days. Thisglobal demand for additional bandwidth is being satisfied with densewavelength division multiplexing, a market where we intend to bepre-eminent. Our unique products are enabled by our depth in opticalfibre technology."
Broadly, the planned product range can be divided into three categories:
DFB fibre laser arrays which will provide closely packed channels for DWDM (Dense Wave Division Multiplexing) and which will offer significant advantages over semiconductors lasers.
Optical filters with enhanced performance allowing more channels per optical fibre.
Broadband optical amplifiers.
All of the planned products will exhibit performance parameters an order of magnitude greater than those of current alternatives.
Southampton Photonics was founded by Professor David Payne FRS, head of the ORC, who is the company's Chairman. Professor Payne led the team that invented the optical amplifier, the enabling technology behind DWDM, in 1986, and was jointly awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal for developing the erbium-doped fibre amplifier in 1998.
Professor Payne commented, "We have an immensely strong team ofworld-class photonics technologists in the company, matched by a highly experienced management team with US focus. Between us we have over a hundred years of experience at the top of the optical telecoms field. For this reason, we have attracted an outstanding set of investors from the USA and the UK and a record level of first-round funding".
Don Spalinger was previously managing Vice President/Practice Leader of world-wide telecommunications research at the Gartner Group, and was founder and president of On-Stream Networking, acquired by 3Com as its Broadband Access Division. Dr. Peter Ballantyne, who has joined from Bookham Technology as Senior VP, operations and engineering, previously spent 23 years at Lucent Technologies and Bell Labs, whilst Dr Malcolm Varnham, a co-founder of the company, has been appointed as VP Intellectual Property and Technical Business Development.
Technical directors are Dr Anatoly Grudinin, who is internationallyrecognised in non-linear fibre optics, including soliton transmissionand Raman amplification, and Professor Mikhail Zervas, a specialist inBragg gratings and optical amplifiers. Other world-class photonicstechnologists include Dr Michael Durkin and Dr Morten Ibsen.
On hearing the news, Lord Sainsbury, Minister for Science andInnovation, said: "This is excellent news. Following on from a number of other major investments in this area, it confirms the UK's position as Europe's leading location for manufacture and development of equipment for the rapidly growing optical communications market."
The major investors in Southampton Photonics include Quantum Technology Partners, a Silicon Valley-based investment company formed especially for the purpose of investing in the company, Interwest Partners and Sevin Rosen, both US-based and whose previous investments included Ciena, a pioneering company in the DWDM optical networking industry, and Amadeus Capital Partners, the UK-based technology investment company. Other investors include Marsh & McLennan Capital and the University of Southampton.
http://www.southamptonphotonics.com
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