Investment agreement between ficonTEC Service and RoboTechnik Intelligent Technology
Matthias, Trinker, Jun Dai and Torsten Vahrenkamp (l-r) at Photonics West 2020.
ficonTEC Service GmbH, a global supplier of highly automated production machine systems for photonic device assembly and test, has entered into and implemented a structured investment agreement with RoboTechnik Intelligent Technology.
Struck with a strong ‘think global, act local’ cord, the investment is intended to provide agile financial resources for ficonTEC as a whole to aggressively pursue a strengthening of their global market position, as well as set a plan into action to realize at least a doubling of overall revenue in a short period of time. Immediate consequences of the investment include a pro-active expansion of ficonTEC’s business operations across a number of high-growth, integrated photonic-enabled application sectors in all significant technology regions, such as those found in Europe, the US and Asia.
Firstly, at regional level within Europe, this has already expedited during 2020 an increase of space, resources and manpower for R&D, Production and Sales. Secondly, a dedicated Sales & Support team is currently being established in the USA, including creation of well-connected Application Labs at a major US research location, and which combined illustrate ficonTEC’s strong commitment to a larger commercial and corporate footprint for this region.
In parallel to these developments, ficonTEC China (ficonTEC Service GmbH (Shanghai) Co., Ltd.) can additionally pursue a more autonomous path in developing IP and machine systems tailored to the particular demands of the markets they serve. Given the terrific growth expected for diverse application areas affected by continued integrated photonics development within the Chinese region, as well as RoboTechnik’s own understanding of the Chinese markets, it is clear that the RoboTechnik investment will be instrumental in this process.
This strategic move, approved by the German authorities, has been implemented to promote the continued business success across all of ficonTEC’s current and future fields and regions of activities, through the well-established and highly experienced management team led by co-founders Matthias Trinker (CFO) and Torsten Vahrenkamp (CEO) based in Germany. In addition, management of core assets such as IP and software is rigorously protected under ISO/IEC 27001, ensuring strict confidentiality of owned and customer IP rights.
The path leading to this agreement during the last 12 months has revealed a shared vision for, and facilitated a close working relationship between the leading parties. As stated by Jun Dai, Chairman and CEO at RoboTechnik, “to complement our position as a leading supplier of robot-based automated manufacturing systems, we are very pleased to have found in ficonTEC an exceptionally well-positioned player in the rapidly growing area of silicon photonics device manufacturing. In addition to providing financial support to accelerate ficonTEC’s global expansion strategy, we also expect to boost our own future growth opportunities both in our existing markets and in those emerging sectors showing increasing interest in integrated-photonics-enabled technologies.”
Torsten Vahrenkamp, CEO at ficonTEC, commented, “In RoboTechnik we have found a partner that will profoundly support advancement of our capabilities and the caliber of the equipment we can offer to our customers predominantly in China, but so too in Europe, USA and Asia in general. Complementary to our existing target markets, new opportunities in fully automated manufacture of camera modules, for example, for automotive and inspection applications, are already visible through utilization of RoboTechnik’s rapid and innovative in-line manufacturing support equipment. They are additionally incredibly supportive, enabling us to continue to grow even during the appalling Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing global slow-down. We are very excited both by the intrinsic security afforded to us and the extra resources and capability this agreement has made available. We can now look forward to many more years of enabling our customers to achieve their own market objectives”.
