Business briefs

21 Nov 2003

Including news from ThreeFive Photonics, ASIP, Linos, DALSA and more.

•  ASIP of the US, a maker of integrated optical components, has merged with ThreeFive Photonics of the Netherlands, a developer of optical subsystems. ThreeFive will now operate as a subsidiary of ASIP. Coinciding with the merger, ThreeFive’s existing investors announced a further $7.5 million of funding for the new joint venture. This brings ASIP’s total funding to date to $31 million.

•  OSI Systems has acquired fellow US firm Schwarz Electro-Optics (SEO) for $1.5 million. Completed through a bankruptcy court, the newly acquired laser-based remote sensing business will operate as OSI Laserscan. OSI had previously acquired SEO’s weapons simulation business, which now trades as OSI Defense Systems.

•  BTG, the technology commercialization firm, has acquired the exclusive rights to commercialize the strain-compensated, multiple quantum well VCSELs being developed by the Cornell Research Foundation, US. “The telecoms market is looking for a next generation technology that will replace costly, low yield devices at 1300 and 1550 nm,” said Jay Kshatri from BTG. “We believe that the strain-compensated VCSEL is that technology, and we are actively seeking licensees who are interested in integrating this technology into their commercial products.”

•  Linos of Germany has announced that a six year, EURO 30.6 million contract from an unnamed Turkish firm has finally been given the go-ahead. Linos says the delay was due to the customer taking longer than expected to fulfill all the conditions in the contract. Together with its reorganization program, Linos expects its revenue and profit margin to improve considerably compared to previous years.

•  Canadian imaging specialist DALSA has received a C$1.3 million order for its high-performance CCD image sensor chips from Accu-Sort of the US. The chips, which will be delivered over the next 12 months, will be used in a bar-code-scanning system for automated parcel sorting.

•  A collaboration of European researchers headed by Richard Friend from the University of Cambridge, UK, has won this year’s EU Descartes Prize. The EURO 700 000 award recognises the team’s pioneering work on polymeric light-emitting diodes used in displays.