Ray,
Remember, if at first you do succeed, try to hide your astonishment...
You got to the right site, www.nationalpost.com, but used the wrong search box. The one on top is a search engine, like Yahoo. Use the yellow box on the right side of the window which is tied to the newspapers archives.
Here is the article
Boost for Quebec's fibre-optic industry
New plant opens
Robert Gibbens
Financial Post
Robert Galbraith, National Post
In the clean room of Lumenon Innovative Lightware Technology's new building, which was opened in Montreal yesterday: from left, Dr. Chia-Li, head of research; Mark Andrews, chief technology officer; and Iraj Najafi, thechief executive.
MONTREAL - Quebec's budding fibre-optic components industry took a leap forward yesterday with the opening of a mass-production plant for hybrid glass chips in Montreal and a capacity boost at a Quebec City test equipment unit.
Lumenon Innovative Lightwave Technology Inc.'s new breed of chips can raise the capacity of fibre-optic communications pipes at a fraction of the cost of electronic components, said Iraj Najafi, chief executive, and Mark Andrews, vice-president of technology, two former university scientists who developed the glass-based technology.
The chips have been made in a pilot plant and tested by potential customers such as Nortel Networks Corp. and Lucent Technologies Inc.
But Lumenon's $20-million 53,000-sq.-ft. mass production plant, opened by Bernard Landry, Quebec's Finance Minister, will turn out 500 chips a day next summer and 1,000 daily in 2002. They cost up to $40,000 each.
Exfo Electro-Optical Engineering Inc. is doubling its fibre-testing plant's capacity at a cost of about $7-million. Its new products cut testing time for fibre-optic components "from hours to less than a minute," said Germain Lamonde, the CEO, in Quebec City.
Mr. Najafi and Mr. Andrews set up Lumenon in 1998 to commercialize their fibre-optic and photonics finds. Lumenon hit the headlines on Dec. 7, when about 250 people crowded into its first annual meeting demanding to know if the chip would work, when production would start and what the revenue flow would be.
Mr. Najafi said "scepticism is normal ... but just wait until mass production starts next April."
He said Pierre-Paul Allard, managing-director of Cisco Systems Canada Co., had joined the board. This set Lumenon's share price alight and it hit US$26.91 on the U.S. over-the-counter market, valuing the firm at US$600-million. The price fell back and recently traded at the US$16 level. Lumenon is now listed on Nasdaq.
Lumenon's chips, designed for the DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing) market, can ensure maximum end-to-end optical networking to help telecommunications firms meet mushrooming Internet, e-commerce and e-mail traffic.
The firm received US$35-million from U.S. insitutions to finance the plant. It has a $3-million grant from Investissement Québec. |
