Internationalisering

Innovation Industries invests in PHIX Photonics Assembly

Innovation Industries invests in PHIX Photonics Assembly to catalyze PHIX’s growth and scale up ambitions
 

Enschede, April 15th 2020 – PHIX started its operations in July 2018 to serve the growing demand for photonic assembly activities. PHIX’s goal of becoming world leaders in this field has come one step closer with large new investments from Innovation Industries and existing investor Oost NL (through Innovatiefonds Twente). These investments catalyze PHIX’s growth and its ambitions to scale up its manufacturing volumes.
 

Phix photo

The photonics market is estimated to grow exponentially during the next 5 years. Photonic technologies find their way into many sectors, including health care, automotive, sensing, consumer electronics and many more. Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) are a key enabling technology and facilitate further miniaturization, faster connections and cost reduction.

Before PICs can be incorporated into products, the chips need to be connected to other components, such as optical fibers, amplifiers and electronics with great accuracy. This photonics assembly activity is the core competence of PHIX. PHIX is the photonic equivalent of the outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) companies known from the electronics industry.

By acting as a back-end foundry service, the customers of PHIX do not need to invest in their own equipment and assembly processes. This enables a quick ramp up from prototype development to volume manufacturing. For others, partnering with PHIX will allow for outsourcing and second sourcing.

In order to serve customers from prototype to volume, PHIX also provides engineering support for product development. PHIX provides design guidelines that take future volume manufacturing requirements into account at an early stage of PIC and product design.

The investments from Innovation Industries and Oost NL will be used for the company’s aggressive growth ambitions and will help to accelerate PHIX’s plans to extend production capabilities.

PHIX CEO Albert Hasper comments: “With the investments by Innovation Industries and Oost NL, PHIX has a solid base to further expand the company. This will enable PHIX to provide customers with the best production technologies, now and in the future. Ramping to high volume production is an essential step for maturing the photonics industry”.

“PHIX will play an important role in mass adoption of applications with integrated photonics,” says Nard Sintenie, General Partner of Innovation Industries. “We look forward to helping PHIX sustain and grow their leadership position in the field of photonics assembly.”

Pieter Klinkert, senior investment manager Tech at Oost NL, adds: “We are happy to invest, with funds from Innovatiefonds Twente, in a company that has developed very well in the past two years in the ecosystem around Photonics, one of the “Key Enabling Technologies” dictated by the EU. Innovative companies like PHIX are of great importance to the region and underline the frontrunning position of companies around the University Twente in the area of Photonics. They attract talent and are an added value to the innovative ecosystem in Twente and beyond. We’re proud to contribute to their sustainable growth.”


About PHIX Photonics Assembly

Starting its operation in 2018, PHIX is a European based provider of automated photonics assembly services with its main facilities in Enschede, The Netherlands. We aim to become world leader in the supply of PIC based components and modules in scalable production volumes. We offer fiber arrays and assembly services for the four major technology platforms (InP, Si, LiN and SiN) and are specialized in hybrid integration of chip-to-chip and fiber-to-chip modules. PHIX provides a one-stop-shop from design to volume production of PIC modules.
 

For further information, please visit: www.phix.com

Contact person: Gijs van Ouwerkerk, g [dot] vanouwerkerk [at] phix [dot] com, +31 6 14 89 23 98.