(http://www.micropelt.com/aboutus/locations/halle.php)

Micropelt at Weinberg Campus

Grand Opening of Micropelt Chip Fab

Micropelt opened officially the worlds first volume thermoelectric wafer production facility at June 21^st 2011 in Halle (Saale). See also the press releases in English and German.

Micropelt staff at Weinberg Campus Halle

From left to right: Oliver Keilhack (CFO Micropelt), Nils Sandvoβ (Investitionsbank Saxony-Anhalt), Mathias Ressel (Goodvent Magdeburg), Fritz Volkert (CEO Micropelt), Board member Dr. Christian Suttner, Chairman of the Board Hubertus Leonhardt (SHS VC) and Dr. Heinz Friedrich Franke (Head of Business Development Department Halle/Saale)

Micropelt, Freiburg (Germany) based pioneer in micro thermoelectric generators, Peltier coolers and sensors announces the kick-off of the company’s first volume production site. An investment of up to 8 million Euros will be made by Micropelt until completion of the new fab in mid 2011. Substantial funding has been raised from the fund “IBG Fonds I”, managed by Goodvent VC, and from mbg Sachsen-Anhalt, all based in the state capital of Magdeburg. Development subsidies of the state of Saxony Anhalt complete the funding. The fab is located in the Eastern German city of Halle, creating 16 new full time jobs on 720 square meters of floor space. Production starts in fall 2011. Full qualification and certification will be completed in 2012. Volume ramp-up and multi-shift operation is also targeted for 2012, such that the strongly growing demand for thermogenerators (TEG), thermoelectric coolers (TEC), and fast thermal sensors can be covered.

Micropelt at Weinberg Campus

Burkhard Habbe, VP Business Development, sees significant opportunities in various markets: “More and more OEMs and users of wireless sensors leverage energy harvesting power supplies to avoid battery maintenance and extend power budgets.” For laser companies producing high volumes of stabilized laser transmitters for telecom and FTTx Micropelt’s laser TECs offer the “three-Dollar cooling solution these markets can tolerate,” Habbe continues, and goes on: “Explosive growth in genomic testing, analytics and diagnostics creates a huge demand for fast and precise small-scale PCR processes. No one can drive those thermal cycling processes as good as our micro TECs.” Sensing applications use the effect of Micropelt thermogenerators acting as a huge thermopile in terms of signal and as a very small one in terms of speed – both at the same time. Fritz Volkert, Micropelt’s CEO, makes optimistic conclusions despite the gloomy economical trend: “Our products support the strong long term trends of sustainability, efficiency and optimal resource utilization in many ways. We have planned our first fab for 100 wafer starts per week, good for up to 10 million devices per year. And we are prepared to scale up.”

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