Author Archives: johnlincoln

Financing company growth

As a high growth industry, continually targeting new markets, there are few photonics companies that have not had to raise capital .  As UK photonics companies have grown most have faced tough decisions between sustaining growth, raising equity finance and/or partnering with a strategic industry investor through trade sale. UK government is reviewing the availability…

UK Photonics in H2020

As the UK policy paper on Collaboration on science and innovation: a future partnership is published we have taken a quick look at the participation of UK photonics industry in Horizon2020. 34% of all ~14,000 H2020 projects over all topics and subjects have at least 1 UK partner 8.5% of all H2020 projects with a…

Photonics Grand Challenges

Photonics continues to develop rapidly,  driven by diversification into new applications and rapid expansion of existing applications.  This presents the industry, in the UK,  with a number of challenges.  The PLG are currently capturing and summarising these challenges and what actions may have a transformative impact on them and the industry. The current draft of…

UK photonics worth £12.9 billion to UK economy

UK photonics industry output now exceeds £12.9 billion, is growing at twice the national average.

This updated analysis of the UK photonics industry shows a rise of £2.4 bn since the last report in 2013, recording an average growth rate of  >5.3%, which finds UK photonics to be growing at twice the speed of the rest of the UK economy.

The UK Photonics: the Hidden Economy report, published in May 2018, details  how such an enabling sector can be analysed and compares UK photonics to other key UK manufacturing sectors, the fit of photonics to the UK industry strategy and its position relative to the European and global photonics industries.