- March 2002 -

March 14th, 2002

UK's Lord Sainsbury opens Kamelian's Indium Phosphide semiconductor manufacturing facility

Oxford, 8 February, 2002: Lord Sainsbury, the UK's minister for science and innovation, today officially opened Kamelian's Indium Phosphide (InP) component manufacturing plant at the Oxford Industrial Park.  This 20,000 square feet semiconductor facility is one of the most advanced in Europe and will be used by the UK fibre optic component vendor for production, packaging and test of a range of semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA)  products.  SOAs are key components in global optical telecommunications networks, which carry high-speed voice and data traffic. 

"This formal opening represents a significant milestone for us. It is a great tribute to the team at Kamelian that we have so quickly established this world-leading semiconductor manufacturing facility," said Paul May, CEO of Kamelian. "We are starting our customer sampling programme, and we are now gearing up for full production." 

"The UK has a world-class science and manufacturing base in optical technologies, with highly respected expertise in many of our universities." said Science and Innovation Minister Lord Sainsbury.  "Optoelectronics has rapidly become one of the new wave of key technologies underpinning the Knowledge Economy in the UK.  I am delighted to be opening this new facility which will make the essential building blocks for the next generation of optical networks."

Kamelian's new facility has been specifically designed for manufacturing III-V compound semiconductor devices, specifically Indium Phosphide-based Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (SOA) components, for the global communications industry. The facility gives Kamelian a unique in-house capability to run the complete production process from wafer growth through to device fabrication and test, and optical packaging.

The company is developing a range of products based on combining the optical switching and amplification capabilities of semiconductor optical amplifiers with the established fixed wavelength routing capabilities of passive components.  These products can perform dynamic functions such as switching, amplification, wavelength conversion and optical signal regeneration. 

The first products to go into volume production will be discrete devices - optical pre-amplifiers and power boosters. More complex components such as the multi-wavelength optical linear amplifier (OLA), that Kamelian demonstrated live at the European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC 2001) are planned for the near future. Theses products will provide our customers with much needed price/performance improvements over existing technologies.

Kamelian will be exhibiting at the Optical Fibre Conference (OFC 2002) in Anaheim, CA. between 17 and 22 March 2002.

About Kamelian
Kamelian was formed in mid-2000 and has received funding to the level of $28 million from 3i, Lightspeed, and Goldman Sachs.  The company has a significant expertise in processing III-V materials, and the Indium Phosphide wafer fabrication facility recently completed at Yarnton, near Oxford, is one of the most advanced of its type in Europe.  Kamelian will use the facility to manufacture and package semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) in both single package and multi-channel format.

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