Chinese transceiver supplier, Broadex Technologies has acquired the UK and Europe operations of Kaiam.
The struggling division of US-based Kaiam Corp went into administration at the end of 2018, when Blair Nimmo and Alistair McAlinden of KPMG were appointed as joint administrators, and 310 of the 338 employees were made redundant.
Broadex has formed a UK subsidiary, which it says is ‘tentatively named’ Broadex Technologies UK, for the $5.5 million purchase. The UK business was formed with an additional $10 million of Broadex’s funds. According to the announcement, the acquired assets include the Livingston, Scotland facility (pictured), and all equipment related to the business, including inventory, workshop decoration and supporting facilities, alongside any IP and patents.
The acquisition is designed to expand the China-based company’s manufacturing capabilities of planar lightwave circuit (PLC) chips, and stabilise the upstream supply of related products, at the same time, providing a new production research and development base, and enhancing Broadex’s strategy when it comes to optical chips and related devices. After the completion of this transaction, the company will increase the scale of revenue and enhance profitability. A portion of the original Kaiam employees will be retained, and, according to the administrators, it is hoped that, longer-term, the business will grow and more jobs will be created.
The two businesses had a pre-existing partnership, which aided the time to market of the LightScale 2 architecture products such as the enhanced series of 100G ‘CWDM4+’ transceivers, whilst allowing the creation of a strategic transceiver reserve program, intended to protect US and European data centres from the effects of a US-China trade war.
