CHARLTON, Mass., Feb. 23 -- FiberCore Inc. has closed on the financing of its new $25 million facility in Jena, Germany. Sparkasse Bank of Jena led the funding consortium, which included DKB Bank of Leipzig and AVV Thuringen GmbH of Jena. The financing package included about $11 million in loans and leases, and $8 million in grants from agencies of the German government. FiberCore contributed the balance of the funds.
    "The completion of this financing is a major milestone for FiberCore," said Mohd A. Aslami, FiberCore's president and CEO. "We are currently on target to complete the new Jena facility by the end of 2001. A major portion of this expansion deals with multimode capacity, which is expected to grow to over 500,000 km in 2002. As our Jena facility currently supplies essentially all of the company's multimode fiber customers worldwide, this expansion is key to our strategy to build market share to help satisfy continued strong industry demand."
    FiberCore, Inc. develops, manufactures and markets single-mode and multimode optical fiber preforms and optical fiber for the telecommunications and data communications markets.