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Press Release Detail: Thorlabs acquires Gemfire owned Covega Corporation Newton NJ and Fremont CA – March 23, 2009 - Thorlabs Inc of Newton, NJ and Gemfire Corporation of Fremont, CA jointly announced today the Thorlabs acquisition of the assets of Gemfire owned Covega Corporation, Jessup MD. Covega is a leading provider of Indium-Phosphide and Lithium-Niobate components and modules to the telecommunication, medical, industrial, defense, and test and measurement markets. Covega is a vertically integrated company with full InP and LiNbO3 foundry capabilities including, device design & modeling, wafer growth & fabrication, and advanced E/O device packaging. Covega products include Superluminescent Light Emitting Diodes (SLEDs), Fabry-Perot Lasers, Tunable Laser Gain Chips, Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers, and Lithium Niobate Modulators. Alex Cable, President and Founder of Thorlabs, Inc. said of the new acquisition “I am thrilled to welcome Covega into the Thorlabs family of companies, which now includes eight entities, all with substantial manufacturing and design capabilities. Covega comes to the Thorlabs family with a new suite of optical technologies that Thorlabs looks forward to offering to its diverse customer base. We are committed to ensuring continued access to all of Covega’s existing customers to the broad array of products that Covega currently manufacturers Gemfire’s divestiture of Covega will allow the company to focus more on its leading Planar Lightwave Circuits (PLCs) and integrated subsystems, such as its new ultra-low loss AWG (Arrayed Waveguide Grating), compact Athermal AWG, and VMUX, a high-performance DWDM Variable Multiplexer module. The Gemfire PhotonIC™ planar-processed silica-on-silicon process allows Gemfire to integrate multiple functions into more compact intelligent modules such as its wide range of Add-Drop Mux designs used in ROADM (Reconfigurable Optical Add-Drop Module) line cards. Athermal AWGs allow multiplexing and demultiplexing of DWDM signals over a wide range of operating temperatures, without the need for temperature stabilization or moving parts. Rick Tompane, Gemfire CEO, stated “We are pleased that the Covega product line fit so well within the Thorlabs family, assuring all customers will continue to be supported by a world class team“. About Thorlabs: About Thorlabs, Inc. Thorlabs is a leading designer and manufacturer of photonics equipment for research, manufacturing, and biomedical applications. Founded in 1989, Thorlabs is headquartered in Newton, New Jersey with over 500 employees at manufacturing and sales offices throughout the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Sweden, Japan, and China. For more information, visit www.thorlabs.com. About Gemfire: Gemfire is an integrated photonics company headquartered in Fremont, California with high volume manufacturing in Scotland. The Gemfire PhotonICTM planar technology platform enables wafer-scale processing to produce optical components, such as VMUXs, AWGs, Lithium-Niobate phase modulators and polymer VOAs, with industry leading performance, and the ability to scale production in a similar way as the semiconductor industry. Gemfire has been shipping its Telcordia qualified products to dozens of top tier optical system companies all over the world since 2003. To obtain more information and/or images, contact Amy Eskilson of Thorlabs at aeskilson@thorlabs.com or Gemfire at pr@gemfire.com