Mar 19, 2019

After Kaiam Corp of Newark, CA, USA (which makes 100G optical transceivers) on 22 December appointed KPMG as administrators for its subsidiaries Kaiam Europe Ltd and Kaiam UK Ltd then on 24 December made redundant 310 of the 338 workers at the manufacturing site in Livingston, Scotland (due to lack of orders and trading losses), Kaiam Europe’s Planar Lightwave Circuits (PLC) division has been acquired by Broadex Technologies UK Ltd, a newly formed subsidiary of Shanghai-based optical module maker Broadex Technologies Co Ltd (Planar Lightwave Circuits’ biggest customer). In May 2018, Kaiam signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for Broadex to undertake volume production and to supply to the China market QSFP28 100G-CWDM4 transceivers based on Kaiam’s LightScale2 platform. The agreement allowed Broadex to make the transceivers in China and directly address Chinese customers that require local production. It was also intended to complement Kaiam’s in-house manufacturing in Livingston, providing further capacity to address the high-volume data-center market. The MOU included details of mutual technology cooperation and manufacturing arrangements on timeline, cost roadmap, local sourcing and China market development. Joint administrator Blair Nimmo (KPMG’s global head of restructuring) said that the sale of the Kaiam Europe Livingston operation to Broadex preserves 20 jobs and knowledge within Scotland. Kaiam acquired Gemfire, its strategic planar lightwave circuit (PLC) supplier, in 2013, and operated an 8”-wafer silica-on-silicon line for fabricating integrated optical components in the former Gemfire’s large-scale manufacturing facility in Livingston, where it also operated 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s optical packaging lines. “The new owners have expressed a keen desire to grow the PLC business, which could lead to new jobs being created,” says Nimmo. “This Livingston site has historically made significant contributions to the development of PLC technologies and we intend to make this place the center of technological innovations again by new investment and adaption to new market conditions,” says Wei Zhu, CEO of Broadex. “We are committed to making this happen,” he adds. See related items: