Vacuum coatings firm seeks future in solar sector

After a management buyout last July, Vacuum Process Technology LLC in Plymouth is carrying on the tradition of its founders — making vacuum deposition systems for optics applications — but it is also breaking into new markets, and getting results.

This week, the 31-person company shipped its largest vacuum system yet, aimed at coating the 96-inch diameter mirrors that will be used on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the well-known Hubble Space Telescope, that is expected to be launched in 2013.

While the Webb telescope project falls in the company’s legacy product category, optics, Vacuum Process Technology’s newest target, photovoltaics, is also taking shape. Two weeks ago, VPT officials closed what president Ralf Faber called a major partnership with a publicly traded, North American solar panel manufacturer, giving the company its first foothold in the photovoltaics industry.

Included in the deal, said Faber, is a new technology development agreement that will help the unnamed company move into thin-film photovoltaics, an area of the solar business expected to grow significantly over the next few years.

“We have all the ingredients to make a significant impact in the solar industry, but we don’t know everything about (the industry), which is why we are looking for partners,” said Faber.

If market projections are to be believed, the thin-film photovoltaic industry could be a major market for the small company. In a December report, NanoMarkets LLC, a research firm in Virginia, projected the thin-film photovoltaic market could reach $4.6 billion in 2011, and more than $14 billion in 2015.

According to Lawrence Gasman, a principal analyst with NanoMarkets, the move from optics applications to photovoltaics makes sense, as the strategy does not require significant re-engineering of the vacuum deposition equipment. However, he also pointed out that, with the semiconductor industry on a downward spiral, many companies are looking at a similar move.

VPT was originally founded in 1991, but was acquired by German private equity firm Andlinger & Co. Inc. and Faber last July. Faber and his group previously built and sold Sturbridge-based NetOptix Corp. (an occasional customer of VPT) to Corning Inc. for $2 billion in stock in 2000.

While VPT’s core competency, vacuum deposition systems, are used in a number of industries, semiconductor manufacturing has been the largest, but an area the company has avoided. With the semiconductor capital market hurting under the current economic conditions, VPT is actually growing, with five new employees hired in the past four weeks and a handful more expected in the coming months.