Science Minister Lord Sainsbury was today opening a new building for an Oxfordshire company which has grown to become one of the world's leading suppliers of high-power pulsed lasers, writes Maggie Hartford.
Exitech at Hanborough Park, Long Hanborough, now has one of the UK's most advanced "clean rooms" for research on industrial lasers.
It was set up in 1984 by scientists Dr Malcolm Gower and Dr Phil Rumsby while they were working on ultra-violet excimer lasers at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, near Didcot.
Exitech now supplies of laser-based systems for micromachining and material processing in the semiconductor, microelectronics, telecoms, aerospace and biomedicine industries. It employs 52 people and more than 90 per cent of its 7m turnover is exported.
The new building links the company's existing manufacturing and research buildings and has doubled the size of its cleanroom, used for contract research, trials and parts production work.
Senior administrator Mary Livingstone said: "Before, we had to go to and fro in the rain. The new building has amalgamated everything and has made the company more efficient."
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