19 July 2012

Emcore reaches pre-flood capacity on key telecom production

Emcore Corp of Albuquerque, NM, USA, which makes components, subsystems and systems for the fiber-optic and solar power markets, says that it expects to be fully recovered from the impact of the Thailand floods on its manufacturing operations, and able to achieve pre-flood production levels on all of its continuing product lines by October. The firm expects increased shipments for its fiber-optics segment in the coming quarters as manufacturing volume ramps to normal levels.

Last October, flood waters severely impacted the inventory and production operations of Emcore’s primary contract manufacturer Fabrinet Co Ltd in Thailand. The impacted areas included product lines for the Telecom and Cable Television (CATV) market segments (the Photovoltaics segment was unaffected). Since then, Emcore has implemented a plan to rebuild the impacted production lines at other locations, including an alternate Fabrinet facility in Thailand, as well as its own manufacturing facilities in China and the USA.

The production line for ITLAs (integrable tunable laser assemblies) for 40 and 100Gb/s coherent telecom applications has been up and running since March at Fabrinet, ahead of schedule. Production line qualification has been completed and most customers completed full-line audits and started taking shipments in April. As of this quarter, the ITLA line is operating at pre-flood capacity run-rates. The CATV laser module and transmitter production lines at Emcore’s facility in China reached pre-flood capacity levels in mid July. Emcore expects the tunable XFP (TXFP) transceiver line at Fabrinet to reach volume production levels by October. In the meantime, TXFP manufacturing is continuing at Emcore’s facility in Newark, CA, USA.

“We are very appreciative of our customers' understanding, cooperation, and support during the rebuild of impacted production lines the past 9 months,” says Jaime Reloj, VP of business development. “Our customers have demonstrated their commitment by closely working with us to accelerate product qualification from the new lines. Based on the strong demand for certain product lines, such as ITLA, Emcore is increasing production capacity to exceed pre-flood levels to support orders for 40 and 100Gb/s coherent applications,” he adds.

“Emcore would like to thank our customers and manufacturing partners for their cooperation and assistance during this difficult period,” says CEO Dr Hong Hou. “We are almost fully recovered from the flood disaster.”

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