By Leo Valiquette, Ottawa Business Journal Staff
Fri, Sep 12, 2003 8:00 AM EST
U.K. firm Bookham Technology will wrap up the integration of the Corkstown Road facility it bought from Nortel last year ahead of schedule and the final tally leaves more workers on the street than previously forecast.
Bookham, a maker of fibre-optic components, said it will maintain a local R&D and customer support presence of about 70 employees in a nearby facility in Kanata.
Since Bookham Technology bought Nortel's optical components business last fall for $108 million, it has said the integration of Corkstown would cost the jobs of only half of the operation's 300 staff.
Instead more than 200 staff will end up out of a job by the time the dust settles. Bookham said about 75 per cent of those affected have already left, while the remained will leave by year end as the Corkstown facility's fabrication operation winds down.
Corkstown's indium phosphide fabrication operations are being shut down and consolidated with a similar facility that Bookham already operates in Caswell, U.K.
Bookham said the consolidation of the two operations will be completed four months ahead of the original schedule of Q4 2003.
"We are extremely pleased with the rapid integration of the two facilities," Bookham COO Liam Nagle said in a statement.
"The Caswell facility has been upgraded, we have moved and installed equipment from Ottawa, designs and manufacturing processes have been transferred, and the fab is now functional, with initial product qualifications of chips built at the Caswell facility proceeding to plan."
Fri, Sep 12, 2003 8:00 AM EST
U.K. firm Bookham Technology will wrap up the integration of the Corkstown Road facility it bought from Nortel last year ahead of schedule and the final tally leaves more workers on the street than previously forecast.
Bookham, a maker of fibre-optic components, said it will maintain a local R&D and customer support presence of about 70 employees in a nearby facility in Kanata.
Since Bookham Technology bought Nortel's optical components business last fall for $108 million, it has said the integration of Corkstown would cost the jobs of only half of the operation's 300 staff.
Instead more than 200 staff will end up out of a job by the time the dust settles. Bookham said about 75 per cent of those affected have already left, while the remained will leave by year end as the Corkstown facility's fabrication operation winds down.
Corkstown's indium phosphide fabrication operations are being shut down and consolidated with a similar facility that Bookham already operates in Caswell, U.K.
Bookham said the consolidation of the two operations will be completed four months ahead of the original schedule of Q4 2003.
"We are extremely pleased with the rapid integration of the two facilities," Bookham COO Liam Nagle said in a statement.
"The Caswell facility has been upgraded, we have moved and installed equipment from Ottawa, designs and manufacturing processes have been transferred, and the fab is now functional, with initial product qualifications of chips built at the Caswell facility proceeding to plan."
