Corning Inc., the world“s largest manufacturer of optical fiber and cable, sold off its never-opened Lasertron plant in Nashua, New Hampshire, for USD 6 million in the last week of June 2003. The pro…
Corning Inc., the world“s largest manufacturer of optical fiber and cable, sold off its never-opened Lasertron plant in Nashua, New Hampshire, for USD 6 million in the last week of June 2003. The property, comprising a 31,122 sq meter building on a 22 ha site, has been bought by Liberty Properties Corp. of Boston. The ill-fated Nashua project, which would have made laser pumps, was launched at the height of the telecomms boom in September 2000. Intended to employ 850, the factory never opened because of the collapse in the telecomms market in 2001. Corning also pulled out of other photonics facilities in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts and closed a photonic factory at Rochester, New York. The company sold most of its remaining photonics interests to Avanex Corp. in a deal announced 12 May 2003, receiving a 17% stake in Avanex.