II‐VI Incorporated (Saxonburg, PA; NASDAQ:IIVI) is acquiring Kaiam Laser Limited, a 6-inch wafer fabrication facility in Newton Aycliffe in the U.K. The purchase price of the transaction was $80 million, and paid for from the company’s cash reserves. The 300,000 sq ft facility hosts a 100,000 sq ft clean room designed for high volume manufacturing of compound semiconductor devices based on GaAs, SiC, and InP materials.
Chuck Mattera, President and Chief Executive Officer 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."
He noted, "It adds to our in-house capacity for VCSELs, and is also as part of a broader strategic move to provide a versatile 6-inch wafer fab for GaAs, SiC, and InP-based devices. 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.”
Bardia Peseshki, the CEO of Kaiam (Newark, CA), 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.
Source: II-VI Incorporated