News › JENOPTIK · Ground­brea­king cerem­ony for the new high-tech fab in Dresden

Jen­op­tik is inves­t­ing more than 70 mil­lion euros in new and state-of-the-art pro­duc­tion faci­lity for micro-optics and sensors.

Con­s­truc­tion work on the Jen­op­tik Group’s new high-tech fab at Dres­den Air­port Park began today, Sep­tem­ber 6, 2022, with a ground­brea­king cerem­ony atten­ded by Saxony’s Minis­ter-Pre­si­dent Michael Kret­schmer and Mayor Ste­phan Kühn, Dresden’s Coun­cil­lor for Urban Deve­lo­p­ment, Con­s­truc­tion, Trans­port and Real Estate. The two poli­ti­ci­ans cere­mo­ni­ally broke ground tog­e­ther with Jen­op­tik Exe­cu­tive Board mem­bers Ste­fan Trae­ger and Hans-Die­ter Schu­ma­cher and other repre­sen­ta­ti­ves of the pho­to­nics group. In the after­noon, the com­pany invi­tes its 60 employees at the site tog­e­ther with their fami­lies to a sum­mer party on the con­s­truc­tion site.

»Dres­den will become a main loca­tion for our micro-optics acti­vi­ties. We deli­bera­tely chose one of the most important loca­ti­ons for the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try in Ger­many and Europe, where many glo­bal com­pa­nies and rese­arch insti­tu­ti­ons of the indus­try are pre­sent,« said Ste­fan Trae­ger, Pre­si­dent & CEO of JENOPTIK AG.

Minis­ter-Pre­si­dent Michael Kret­schmer: »The con­s­truc­tion of Jenoptik’s new cle­an­room fac­tory in Dres­den is a strong signal and makes an important con­tri­bu­tion to the tech­no­lo­gi­cal advance­ment of micro­chip manu­fac­tu­ring. The sett­le­ment of Jen­op­tik pro­ves once again the attrac­tion of Sili­con Sax­ony and shows how important an exis­ting good local net­work is to attract new com­pa­nies to the loca­tion. I am plea­sed that Jen­op­tik is con­vin­ced of this semi­con­duc­tor eco­sys­tem, which is uni­que in Europe, and I am sure that all part­ners at the loca­tion will bene­fit from this settlement.«

Extre­mely deman­ding con­s­truc­tion and manu­fac­tu­ring environment

Jen­op­tik is inves­t­ing more than 70 mil­lion euros in the new high-tech fab with a total of 11,000 square meters of net floor space, inclu­ding 2,000 square meters for clean room pro­duc­tion. Pro­duc­tion is sche­du­led to start at the begin­ning of 2025. The new high-tech fab will manu­fac­ture micro-optics and sen­sors, which are mainly used in semi­con­duc­tor litho­gra­phy sys­tems. Pro­duc­tion will take place in clean room clas­ses ISO 5 and 3, which also meet the hig­hest requi­re­ments for vibra­tion-free pro­duc­tion and tem­pe­ra­ture sta­bi­lity. Com­pre­hen­sive vibra­tion moni­to­ring is also in place during the con­s­truc­tion of the fab in order to not dis­rupt the pro­duc­tion pro­ces­ses of neigh­bor­ing com­pa­nies in the indus­trial park.

»The fede­ral state capi­tal Dres­den is proud to have been able to accom­pany such an inno­va­tive and glo­bally active East-Ger­man group in its growth for years now. The new Jen­op­tik fab shows that Dres­den offers an eco­sys­tem with excel­lent rese­arch faci­li­ties, highly qua­li­fied spe­cia­lists and strong part­ners in which high-tech com­pa­nies are con­stantly deve­lo­ping,« said Dres­den Lord Mayor Dirk Hil­bert about the Jen­op­tik investment.

High envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards taken into account

In addi­tion to pre­cise manu­fac­tu­ring con­di­ti­ons, the high-tech fab also meets high envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards: Jen­op­tik aims to meet the »KfW 40 Stan­dard« and »LEED Gold Stan­dard Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion«, curr­ently the most com­pre­hen­sive and strin­gent buil­ding cri­te­ria in terms of sus­taina­bi­lity. To achieve this, com­pre­hen­sive envi­ron­men­tally fri­endly mea­su­res are plan­ned, such as a pho­to­vol­taic sys­tem, recy­cled mate­ri­als during con­s­truc­tion, a highly effi­ci­ent buil­ding enve­lope inclu­ding gree­ning, cold and heat reco­very, and intel­li­gent con­trol technology.

Pho­to­nics as a growth driver

Jen­op­tik has been active in Dres­den since 2007 and curr­ently has more than 60 employees on site. With the new pro­duc­tion faci­lity, Jen­op­tik will con­cen­trate manu­fac­tu­ring in Dres­den, which is curr­ently spread across seve­ral smal­ler exter­nal loca­ti­ons. The pho­to­nics group is crea­ting 60 addi­tio­nal high-qua­lity jobs and incre­asing its local work­force to a total of well over 120 employees. In addi­tion to Dres­den, Jen­op­tik also manu­fac­tures its high-pre­cis­ion and micro-optics at the Thu­rin­gian sites Jena and Trip­tis (poly­mer optics), in Heer­brugg, Switz­er­land, as well as in Jupi­ter (Flo­rida) and Hunt­sville (Ala­bama), USA. In the Advan­ced Pho­to­nic Solu­ti­ons divi­sion, around 2,300 employees work on pho­to­nic tech­no­lo­gies for the suc­cess of future industries.

Optics & sen­sors for the semi­con­duc­tor equip­ment indus­try as well as other sec­tors such as medi­cal tech­no­logy & life sci­en­ces or IT infra­struc­ture & com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons are key growth dri­vers for Jen­op­tik. As a pho­to­nics group, Jen­op­tik is focu­sing on expan­ding these busi­ness areas, which are expec­ted to gene­rate around 75 per­cent of the 1.2 bil­lion euros in reve­nue tar­ge­ted by 2025. »To this end, we are inves­t­ing both in the acqui­si­tion of com­pa­nies, as demons­tra­ted by our recent acqui­si­ti­ons, and in orga­nic growth, for exam­ple by expan­ding our own infra­struc­ture. The Dres­den high-tech fab is the lar­gest sin­gle invest­ment in Jenoptik’s recent history,« said CFO Hans-Die­ter Schumacher.

With the new fab, Jen­op­tik is mee­ting the rapidly gro­wing demand for pho­to­nic solu­ti­ons. Indus­try experts pre­dict fur­ther growth for the semi­con­duc­tor equip­ment indus­try – the main cus­to­mer of the new fab’s pro­ducts – in the next years.

Focus on high demand for micro-optics

An important area of appli­ca­tion for micro-optics is the semi­con­duc­tor equip­ment indus­try. For exam­ple, micro-opti­cal sen­sors enable the exact posi­tio­ning of wafers during litho­gra­phic pro­ces­ses for chip pro­duc­tion. Appli­ca­ti­ons include both DUV and EUV litho­gra­phy. Micro-optics and micro-opti­cal sen­sors are cha­rac­te­ri­zed by hig­hest pre­cis­ion in smal­lest space and very flat design. They direct light by means of micro- and nanos­truc­tures and – unlike clas­si­cal optics – are manu­fac­tu­red in a litho­gra­phy pro­cess simi­lar to semi­con­duc­tor pro­duc­tion. In addi­tion to chip pro­duc­tion, they are used in other pri­ma­rily tech­no­lo­gi­cal manu­fac­tu­ring pro­ces­ses that require highly pre­cise and or very fle­xi­ble posi­tio­ning of light for pro­cess steps, for exam­ple in laser mate­rial pro­ces­sing, or qua­lity assu­rance, for exam­ple in inspec­tion pro­ces­ses. The very light and small indi­vi­dual com­pon­ents, often only a few micro­me­ters in size, can be com­bi­ned to form minia­tu­ri­zed scan­ning and swit­ching sys­tems with fle­xi­ble mul­ti­ple applications.

Fab facts and figures

Time­line

• Purchase of land: May 2021
• Ground­brea­king: Sep­tem­ber 2022
• Top­ping out cerem­ony: mid 2023
• Inte­rior work: 2nd half of 2024
• Pro­duc­tion start/opening: early 2025

Use of space & fab parts

• Site area: 24,000 sqm, 
  • of which approx. 60% sqm curr­ently under construction
  • of which approx.40% sqm later expansion/extension options
• total net area incl. all tech­ni­cal and ancil­lary areas: approx. 11,000 sqm net 
  • of which clean room/production area: 2,000 sqm
  • of which logi­stics area: approx. 800 sqm
  • of which tech­ni­cal areas (for buil­ding tech­no­logy as well as media sup­ply): 4,000 sqm
  • of which office areas: approx. 1,500 sqm
  • of which mee­ting area, show­room and recep­tion area: 500 sqm

Pro­ject & partners

• Plan­ning: RSE Archi­tek­ten Inge­nieure GmbH, Stutt­gart, Germany
• Gene­ral and tech­ni­cal buil­ding ser­vices plan­ning: CRC Clean Room Con­sul­ting GmbH, Frei­burg, Germany
• Con­s­truc­tion: indi­vi­dual awar­ding of the trades

Fab on the web: /www.jenoptik.com/hightech-fab-dresden

Images of the event are available in our Jen­op­tik image data­base or through this direct link.