Photonics News No 78

Under this motto, we celebrated our second May Festival with the entire staff and their families, as well as neighboring business partners and several friends. NOX the Robot made a special guest appearance and left behind a lasting impression, especially among the youngest in the crowd.
We erected another maypole: bigger and more beautiful than its predecessor. Over the course of the past few weeks, our staff formed teams and shaved, painted, and decorated the maypole.
To give this Bavarian tradition an international glow, we dedicated the maypole signs to our international production sites and subsidiaries.

Not only are our international networks important to us but our regional contacts as well. This was proven when problems with erecting the maypole necessitated the organization of a crane on short notice. Protected from the approaching storm, we rounded off the day in a beer tent accompanied by music and Bavarian specialties.

This festival came at the right time for Laser Components; that is, just in time to celebrate the record results of the first quarter.
Although the ifo business climate index fell in the first few months of the year, we experienced a very positive increase in incoming orders by almost 30%. Even though this does not say much for the results that the entire year will bring, we can continue much more assuredly on the path on which we currently find ourselves. Our development team works with all production facilities in the LC Group to implement new product ideas; for example, we will be introducing the FiberKey P, the fiber coupling for CO₂ lasers which also transmits a visible pilot beam.

With its first few warm days, spring has been enticing visitors to round off their evenings in the beer gardens. Instead of sitting in rush hour traffic, we now see more and more people being physically active on the streets. Large international sporting events will be taking place soon: Paris and Rio are on the starting line. This was reason enough for us to create an issue dedicated to sports and to address the question of what role optical components play in (high-performance) sports. It was fun to research these niche markets and learn more about the preparations both the athletes and the venues have to make.

I do not want to keep you any longer – neither from reading this issue nor from physical activity. I hear our company sports team through the window right now. They are active again, too.

Patrick Paul

Laser Components GmbH