A Scottish arm of the Alter Technology group, making and packaging chips and photonic parts in Livingston and designing photonics for quantum navigation in Glasgow.
Alter Technology TUV Nord UK is the UK part of the Alter Technology group, which is headquartered in Spain. Its main UK work is making and testing semiconductor devices. At its plant in Livingston, West Lothian, it runs what its chief executive described in 2022 as the UK's only plastic-package QFN semiconductor line. QFN is a type of small chip package. The plant handles runs from several thousand to tens of thousands of devices for customers in industrial, medical, aerospace and defence markets. In the Glentanglement quantum directory it is listed as packaging quantum devices and making frequency-stabilised lasers.
In April 2022 the company opened a Photonics Design Centre in the University of Strathclyde's Technology and Innovation Centre in Glasgow. The centre develops compact, robust photonic products for quantum-enabled positioning, navigation and timing, and for satellite optical communications. Stephen Duffy, chief executive of the UK company, said the local photonics and quantum ecosystem, access to skills and proximity to partners were reasons for choosing Glasgow. We did not find a formal mission statement for the UK company, so we have not invented one.
The UK sites are Livingston and Glasgow, both in Scotland. The Glasgow centre shares its building with the Fraunhofer Centre for Applied Photonics and Strathclyde's Institute of Photonics, which gives it close contact with research teams. The group announced plans to put about 6 million euros into the design centre and Livingston over three to five years, including equipment, staff and R&D. The Livingston plant was also described as a planned centre of excellence for space and satellite-grade semiconductor and photonic manufacturing. Those are plans reported in 2022.
On the work itself, Mr Duffy said the UK company supplied components for NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover, and the UK company has worked on a European Space Agency contract to evaluate plastic packages for space use. Matt Booker is named as sales director. Reliability testing is done by the Spanish parent. These are company claims. We found no staff culture statement, but the work suggests a mix of manufacturing, quality and engineering teams, with a smaller design group in Glasgow.
People employed in a business like this include manufacturing and process engineers, quality and test engineers, photonics and packaging designers, supply-chain and sales staff, and technicians on the production line. Physics, electronics, materials and engineering subjects lead into these roles. The company's UK website and the Strathclyde and Glentanglement pages are the places to see the current projects.
Website: www.alter-technology.com
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