Zeiss and Senorics establish photonics partnership

15 Oct 2019

Focus of investment by Zeiss is on the joint development of specialised sensor technology.

Optics giant Zeiss has made an unspecified financial investment in Senorics, a spin-out company of TU Dresden, Germany, that aims to miniaturize spectroscopic application technologies and prepare them for the mass market.

An indication of its financial fire-power is that in the last fiscal year, the Zeiss Group generated annual revenue totaling more than €5.8 billion across its four segments Industrial Quality & Research, Medical Technology, Consumer Markets and Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology.

Zeiss commented that the funding “marks the start of a technology collaboration to develop small and cost-effective sensors for industrial use in quality assurance and in process monitoring, such as on production lines for foodstuffs, agricultural products, plastics and medicine.”

Senorics says its sensor technology has the potential to use small, cost-effective systems to measure substances in a wide range of solids and liquids such as those found in foodstuffs, agricultural products, plastics and medicines.

New applications

Zeiss is actively shaping global markets in the field, which it says should benefit Senorics. The buyer will “also have the opportunity to use the Senorics technology to tap into new applications that it was previously harder to do with existing technologies in its portfolio.”

Dr. Philipp Strack, Head of Zeiss Ventures, commented, “We will begin by examining common application cases. Senorics’ technology has the potential to create compact, cost-effective sensors for applications such as compositional analysis. The investment is a way of consistently implementing our strategy in the fields of advanced sensor and data solutions.”

Dr. Ronny Timmreck, CEO of Senorics, added, “The fact that Zeiss has approved the quality of our technology considerably increases customer trust. This collaboration supports us with both the development and marketing for our technology. What’s more, the collaboration with Zeiss following the closing of our seed funding round in late 2018 was a further milestone in the long-term advancement of Senorics.”