Alcatel to expand range of technologies

17 Jun 2002

French optoelectronic component manufacturer Alcatel is to expand its production capacity and technology range following encouraging mid-year financial results.

The company is planning to extend its technological expertise with a number of new product development areas. These include passive optical components such as fibre Bragg gratings and arrayed waveguides for optical filtering and routing, new wavelength monitoring and locking devices, new methods for tuning distributed feedback lasers, multiple pump modules for Raman amplification and L-band lasers and amplifiers.

Expansion of Alcatel's physical resources are already in the pipeline under the company's "Optronics 2000" project. Following a USD 100 million investment, the Nozay plant in France should become operational later this year with an additional 11000m2 floorspace. More than 1000 new jobs should also result.

Alcatel has also acquired Canadian start-up Innovative Fibres, the DWDM optical filter specialist. MH