Business briefs

27 Aug 2004

Including news from Newport, Zygo, Rofin-Sinar, Kodak and more.

General company news:

•  Newport's plan for integrating Spectra-Physics into its existing business will result in 75 to 100 job losses. Manufacturing facilities in Oroville, California, and Chandler, Arizona, will close and activities will be relocated to other plants in the two US states. Duplicate product lines, operations and administrative activities in the US and Europe will also be consolidated. Newport says these actions will result in annual savings of $10 - $12 million and will take place over the next nine months.

•  Zygo, US, has agreed to sell its vacant Westborough, Massachusetts, facility for $2 million in cash to an undisclosed buyer. The deal is expected to go through in the fall of 2004. "This sale will mark the completion of our exit from the telecommunications segment," said Zygo's CEO Bruce Robinson.

•  Rofin-Sinar has increased its stake in Dilas Diodenlaser of Germany from 15% to 95% of the common stock in a cash transaction. The remaining 5% is held by one of Dilas' co-founders. Dilas has 130 employees and makes high-power diode laser bars.

•  Kodak, US, is to purchase the CMOS image sensor business of National Semiconductor for an undisclosed sum. Kodak will also acquire some intellectual property and equipment and plans to hire around 50 of the imaging business' current employees. As a result of the acquisition, Kodak will open a new office for its image sensor solutions division in Sunnyvale, California.

•  Sony has launched what it believes is the world's first LED-backlit LCD televisions. Sony's 40 and 46 inch Qualia series televisions contain Luxeon LEDs made by Lumileds of California, US.

Contracts:

•  ThreeFive Photonics of the Netherlands, a subsidiary of ASIP, has secured a $2.5 million contract from the Dutch government. The firm will team up with the Technical University of Eindhoven to research technologies including quantum dot active regions and high-aspect-ratio photonic bandgap structures.

•  Axsys Technologies, US, has received a $18.6 million contract from Ball Aerospace and Technology to produce beryllium optical substrates from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Due to launch in 2011, the JWST will replace NASA's Hubble telescope.

Distribution agreements:

•  Mad City Labs, the US maker of nanopositioning systems, has named a series of exclusive sales representatives. The company will be represented by LOT-Oriel in the UK and Ireland; Laseranalytik Starna in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands; Acexon Technologies in Singapore; and IOTA in Northern California.

•  RSoft Design Group, the US developer of simulation software for the photonics, telecoms and semiconductor industries, has hired Anomaly as its Israeli distributor.

•  UK-based Sherwood Technology has agreed a non-exclusive supply licence agreement with Sicpa of Switzerland. Sicpa will now market a range of inks produced using Sherwood's color-change DataLase chemistry.