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    1. Manufacturing Services & Testing
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    StockerYale opens LED systems manufacturing and R&D facility

    Oct. 1, 2008
    The new facility in Cork, Ireland, will allow StockerYale to double its production capacity and boost R&D of chip-on-board technology.

    StockerYale Inc., a manufacturer of LED modules for industrial applications such as machine vision, has opened a state-of-the-art facility at Little Island in Cork, Ireland. The new building was constructed mainly to expand the company’s production capacity due to StockerYale’s rapid growth.

    “Our year-on-year growth for 2008 is projected at 40%+ and we are projected to meet this again in 2009,” said StockerYale spokesman Niall Bolster. “We plan to increase our die placement capacity from 25K LEDs per day to 50K LEDs per day by mid-2009.”

    The company’s LED systems business is experiencing significant growth in the inspection, industrial, and security markets.

    This growth is “the result of sales and marketing investments made in the past year, coupled with strong demand for machine vision applications, including solar cell, flat panel glass and printed circuit board inspection, and optical character recognition for security applications,” said Mark Blodgett, chairman and CEO of StockerYale, Inc., which is headquartered in Salem, New Hampshire.

    The new facility will have twice the square footage (~10,000 sq ft) of the old one and is located in an area more suited to high-tech light industrial manufacturing. The new facility is purpose built for StockerYale, and will include a clean-room and assembly area, said Bolster.

    Four to five new employees will be hired, a 20% increase in staff. The Cork facility will also serve as a research and development center in support of the company’s patented chip-on-board LED technology. Blodgett said that the company plans to penetrate new high-growth and high-margin verticals, such as the dental and dermatology markets using the new Cork facility.

    StockerYale Ireland Ltd was originally founded under the name of Cork Opt through an association with the UCC (University College Cork). CorkOpt was acquired by StockerYale in June 2000 and had been located at the Airport Business Park beside Cork International Airport.