Overview
Kaiam Corporation, a Newark, California maker of optical transceivers for data center networking, ran an 8-inch silica-on-silicon planar lightwave circuit (PLC) wafer fab in Livingston, Scotland. The fab was built by Southampton University spin-out Kymata (founded 1998), passed to Alcatel Optronics in a 2001 all-share deal valued at EUR 134M, then to Avanex and on to Gemfire Europe, before Kaiam completed its acquisition of Gemfire in April 2013. Kaiam's UK operations entered administration on December 24, 2018, laying off 310 of 338 staff, and the Livingston plant was acquired by Chinese optical component maker Broadex Technologies in March 2019. Key facility details include: The facility is situated at Livingston, West Lothian, Scotland, United Kingdom. It focuses on Compound Semiconductor on 200mm wafers. Production had been targeted for 2013 before the project was cancelled.
Technology
About Kaiam
Kaiam Corporation was a US optical transceiver company that operated an InP photonic fab in Livingston, Scotland (acquired from Gemfire in 2014). Produced planar lightwave circuits and photonic ICs. The UK operations went into administration in December 2018; the Planar Lightwave Circuits division was acquired by Broadex Technologies UK.