The former Fujitsu and Compound Photonics facility on Aycliffe Business Park has been sold again in an $80m deal – just three months after changing hands.
Around 100 jobs were secured when Kaiam Corporation, a US maker of datacentre transceivers, acquired the manufacturing facilities of the Compound site in May.
But it’s emerged the site has now been sold on to Pennsylvania-based II-VI Incorporated, a leader in engineered materials and optoelectronic components, in a deal worth around £62m.
The firm announced its acquisition of Kaiam’s 6-inch wafer fabrication facility in Aycliffe in a statement this month.
The 300,000 sq ft facility hosts a state-of-the-art 100,000 sq ft clean room designed for high-volume manufacturing of compound semiconductor devices based on GaAs, SiC and InP materials.
Dr. Chuck Mattera, president and CEO of II-VI said: “This facility hosts one of the best clean rooms in the entire compound semiconductor industry and augments our capabilities at a time when industry capacity is rapidly becoming fully subscribed.
“Given the demand we anticipate, this acquisition will allow us faster time to market than building a proprietary green field site and will enhance our leadership position in the supply chain.
“This acquisition will significantly expand our capacity and is expected to enable us over time to penetrate high growth markets driven by, for example, 3D sensing, 5G wireless, the electrification of the car, and data center communications.”
Dr. Bardia Peseshki, the CEO of Kaiam, added: “II-VI will be using this fab more effectively by leveraging its full capacity and multi-purpose use.
“I am looking forward to working with II-VI to establish a commercial relationship that includes having II-VI provide InP-based epitaxial wafers and wafer fabrication services for our products as we continue to expand our transceiver business in the rapidly growing 100G and impending 400G datacenter markets.”
As a part of its vertical integration strategy, II-VI is expanding its VCSEL product family and leveraging its broad engineered materials and optoelectronic device technology platforms and manufacturing capabilities around the globe to drive scale and innovation through the development of high performance compound semiconductor devices.
II-VI Incorporated, a global leader in engineered materials and opto-electronic components, is a vertically integrated manufacturing company that develops innovative products for diversified applications in the industrial, optical communications, military, life sciences, semiconductor equipment, and consumer markets.
Headquartered in Saxonburg, Pennsylvania, with research and development, manufacturing, sales, service, and distribution facilities worldwide, the company produces a wide variety of application-specific photonic and electronic materials and components, and deploys them in various forms including integrated with advanced software to enable our customers.
Kaiam revealed it planned to acquire the Aycliffe site in March this year and completed the deal in May.
Arizona-based Compound Photonics had saved the former RFMD plant from closure after buying it in July 2013.
