RICHARD Tompane, chief executive of troubled optoelectronics firm Gemfire, has said he is "determined" to keep the US company's plant open - in spite of recent mass lay-offs - and keen to strike a proposed bailout deal with the Scottish Government.
RICHARD Tompane, chief executive of troubled optoelectronics firm Gemfire, has said he is "determined" to keep the US company's plant open - in spite of recent mass lay-offs - and keen to strike a proposed bailout deal with the Scottish Government.
Gemfire, which is based in Fremont, California, and is now the owner of the former Kymata plant in Livingston, has blamed its woes on the global economic downturn and the withdrawal of a significant investor.
Nonetheless, the US executive's expression of interest follows an article in The Herald last week, in which Jim Devine, the MP for Livingston, said he hoped to broker an £8m deal to keep open the town's Gemfire factory, which designs and manufacturers microchip components for optical communications networks and recently put 170 people out of work.
"We are trying to keep the plant open," Tompane said in a telephone interview from California.
"I've held talks with the Scottish development group, which has been extremely helpful.
"But I have to tell you that the first time I heard about Jim Devine's offer to help us was in The Herald, and I can tell you that we will absolutely follow up.
"This is down market, an absolutely horrible market with this economic downturn, but our big customers have been supportive and there are good long-term prospects for the factory in Livingston if we can get through this."
He added: "I can also tell you that any help we get from the Scottish Government would help us to recall as many of the employees that were laid off as possible."
If such a deal were struck, it would represent a lifeline to one of the few surviving descendants of Scotland's once-thriving optoelectronics industry.
Since 2003, the Scottish industry's landscape has become more akin to a battlefield, where most of the once bright hopes of the sector, including Terahertz Photonics, Essient and Ferranti Photonics, have become casualties.
Industry observers will also doubtless be disheartened by the £8m value of the proposed aid package to Gemfire.
Scottish hi-tech star Kymata sold itself to French telecoms giant Alcatel in July 2001 in an £82m shares deal - and even that was a far cry from the $1bn proposed flotation on Nasdaq at the height of the technology boom in the late 1990s.
Meanwhile, Gemfire last month sacked all of its Scottish workers, who were told they would receive no redundancy or holiday pay, and closed the doors on the operation.
The company, which has also temporarily closed two factories in California in recent weeks, then recalled around 80 of the Scottish workforce on a part-time, shift contract basis.
It is believed that the company needs £8m to keep the Scottish operation going.
It was unclear yesterday what form this proposed deal between Gemfire and government might take, although it is known that the company has held discussions with Scottish Development International, the inward investment agency, and it is almost certain that any aid would be taxpayer funded.
Two years ago, Gemfire was given a £1.7m grant by the Scottish Government to safeguard jobs, and has drawn £575,000 of the money.
In an interview with The Herald, Devine said: "I've been attempting to broker a deal. I believe the kind of money they are looking for to keep the plant open could be raised."
Gemfire's Livingston plant was originally set up in 1998 as Kymata, a manufacturing spin-out from the universities of Glasgow and Southampton, before being sold to Alcatel in 2001.
At its height, the Scottish operation employed about 450 people.
However, this had dwindled to about 100 by the time Alcatel sold its loss-making optoelectronics unit to Avanex in 2003. Avanex, in turn, sold the optoelectronics business to Gemfire.
