Pirelli Launches PGT Photonics

Pirelli is presenting PGT Photonics, its new company that will specialize in photonics based on nanotechnologies, at the OFC/NFOEC exhibition and conference this week in San Diego. The company is displaying its dynamically tunable laser, integrated tunable laser, 300-pin MSA (multisource agreement) transponders and DWDM XFP (dense wavelength division multiplexing/10-Gb small-form-factor pluggable) transceiver at the exhibition.

PGT Photonics will be based in Milan with its sales office in Atlanta, Ga. Pirelli announced the incorporation of a new company that would integrate the photonics business unit of Pirelli Broadband Solutions and the Optical Innovation Div. of Pirelli Labs earlier this month (See: Pirelli Forms Photonics Group).

“The OFC/NFOEC exhibition and conference is the ideal platform to announce to the industry the name of our new company PGT Photonics,” said Claudio De Conto, general manager for the Pirelli Group and chairman of PGT Photonics. “With a more flexible structure suited for the optical communications sector, we will be more closely focusing on our core business while simultaneously leveraging our expertise in order to meet the needs of the marketplace in a timely manner.”

The Pirelli Group also announced this week it will invest about 140 million euros (about $210 million) to develop research and innovation programs in a new industrial complex it will build in Settimo Torinese, Italy. The Piedmont region Turin Province, the municipality of Settimo Torinese, Politecnico di Torino University and the Pirelli Group recently signed a collaboration agreement to develop the programs, which will focus on manufacturing. The agreement includes the introduction of technologies for the tire sector, including MIRS (mobile immune-robot model); Pirelli's Cyber Tyre, an "intelligent" tyre with sensors that will transmit information useful for driving and control of a vehicle; and TSM (total suspended material), a process for mixing materials.

Pirelli said plans for the project have been shared with unions, with whom an agreement was signed in November 2007. The Piedmont Region will contribute up to 27 million euros, mainly for research and innovation activities, to the complex. Work is expected to begin on the complex in the second quarter of 2008.

"The Settimo project stems from fruitful collaboration between local institutions and Pirelli and is based on four key elements: competitiveness, technology, quality and sustainability, which make it possible to maintain such an industrial presence in Italy despite the trend toward greater manufacturing in low-cost countries that characterizes the tire industry, and an unfavorable macroeconomic context," Pirelli said in a statement.

For more information, visit: www.pirelli.com