Picogiga sees strong recovery in April, relocates Swiss Picopolish facility
GaAs wafer reclaim business relocates to France
"We went through twelve difficult months from the spring of 2001. The crisis was sudden, fast and extended as never before. Therefore, we had to take strategic decisions in order to deal with the situation," said Linh Nuyen, chairman and CEO of Picogiga Group. "After a year of under-activity, recycling of silicon and gallium arsenide wafers shows a strong recovery at Picopolish. Unfortunately, operating expenses have also increased in Switzerland. After studying vainly several solutions to continue the activity, we have decided to close this plant." The company intends to transfer Picopolish s GaAs wafer reclaim activities to France later this year
As for Modulight, the Finnish start-up, fabricating laser diodes for telecommunications, the continuing difficulties in this market sector means the company has pushed back its expected break-even point. "Our 90% investment provision in this company follows conservative accounting rules. This gives no indication about the value of the industrial potential set by the Finnish founders. This young engineering team has shown its capability in industrial management by obtaining ISO 9001 certification in March 2002," said Linh.
Picogiga has taken advantage of the business slowdown in the last twelve months to improve existing products and create new ones which contribute to the present strong recovery, especially for mobile phones. These include an improvement in the linearity and breakage voltage of PHEMT structures and improvement of enhancement mode PHEMTs that use a single power supply.
"We are very satisfied with this recovery, which forms the necessary growth bridge to the market of automotive radar. According to recent market surveys, this application will require gallium arsenide product consumption as large as that of mobile phones by year 2005," said Linh
Jean-Pierre Renault
Tel +33 1 69 31 61 14
E-mail: jprenault@picogiga.com
Web site: http://www.picogiga.com
