Two British photonics companies, Fianium (Southampton) and Point Source (Hamble), have each won a 2009 Queen's Award for Enterprise: International Trade. Given annually by Her Majesty the Queen, the award is widely regarded as the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a British company and is the United Kingdom's top award for business performance.
Fianium
Ultrafast-fiber-laser manufacturer Fianium was granted the Queen's Award for its exceptional growth and export achievements in the rapidly expanding laser-technology market. The company has grown 70% year on year since its formation in 2003, with more than 80% of this growth coming from territories outside the UK, including mainland Europe, the U.S., and Asia.
Fianium founder and CEO Anatoly Grudinin believes that, based on existing customer demand and longer-term market potential, Fianium will be able to maintain this growth rate for the next three to five years. "By developing unique and robust technology, we've been able to build a very strong foundation in the international scientific research community," he says. "Many of the world's most acclaimed universities and professors are using Fianium's lasers to achieve groundbreaking results, which give them the edge they need at the forefront of scientific discovery."
Well-known for its pioneering high-power fiber supercontinuum light sources, Fianium also produces low-power, high-power, high-pulse-energy, UV, and femtosecond fiber-laser systems. The next phase of Fianium's growth is being driven by the exploitation of opportunities in industrial markets; the company is also active in establishing the use of fiber lasers in new applications, displacing alternative technologies and providing users with the ability to do new things.
Point Source
Point Source, which manufactures high-performance fiber-optic laser-delivery systems and is a member of the Qioptiq Group (Paris, France), received the award in recognition of its achievements in international trade. The company increased its overseas revenues by 86% in the three years leading up to the award and sold £33 million of exports in that time.
Point Source develops flexible laser technology for precision instrumentation used in biotechnology research and semiconductor fabrication. Its latest product, which was launched this month (April 2009), combines up to five individual lasers in the wavelength range of 400 nm to 640 nm into one single-mode polarization-maintaining fiber to form plug-and-play system.
Instrumentation based on Point Source technology has been used in scientific projects that include research on the NASA space shuttle, mapping of the human genome, and the development of personalized medicine.
This is the second time that Point Source has won the Queen's Award. In 2002, the company received the Queen's Award for Enterprise in both the International Trade and Innovation categories.
