Photonics News No 69

Dear Reader,

We live through such turbulent times, pandemics, wars, huge rises in fuel costs, inflation, staff shortages across the global supply chain and more. How does Laser Components keep going? All our metrics continue to show an increase in demand year on year and with long term planning many of our supply chain partners are well stocked. When we have had some supply chain challenges with electrical components, we have seen a recovery in supply and in prices that briefly went sky high.

The Laser Components Group has grown beyond 20% last year allowing the investment plans to continue, both for immediate and for longer term. What is a challenge is locating skilled workers for our production plants, and it is the same for giants like mobile phone producers meeting their customers’ demands.  

Globally we now have 280 employees whilst including loyal staff with over 30 years’ service, demonstrating a balanced working environment and careers attractive to our people. There is, like many companies, some attrition, roughly less than 5% in recent years. It is pleasing to be able to plan solidly for the future. The oldest office in Germany is 42 years old, then the UK that is 30 years old. This means our greatest challenge is with long standing employees reaching retirement age, totalling about 20 within the next 5 years. We consider this to be one of many management tasks to keep the group ‘well oiled’ with new members allowing us to keep ahead, and tackling the many business and technical challenges whatever they are.

Chris Varney

Managing Director LASER COMPONENTS (UK) Ltd.