BILLERICA, Mass. and CAMBRIDGE, U.K. -- Polatis Inc., the world’s leading manufacturer of optical switches, today announced it is to open a new production facility in Poland, further increasing its manufacturing and development to support growing customer demand for its optical switch technology.

The new Poland facility, which is due to be operational by early Autumn 2007, will augment the production capacity of its other facilities, whose total demand is expected to triple this calendar year. The new facility will concentrate on manufacture of standard products for telecom and instrumentation markets, while Cambridge and Boston will focus on specialized defense products and new technology development.

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The Poland facility will feature state-of-the-art manufacturing, test and qualification capabilities, and will eventually support 100 people. The new production team have recently completed a year’s training at the company’s Cambridge facility.

“This is an exciting period of growth for our company and the new facility in Poland illustrates the increasing demand for our high performance products in the marketplace,” said Dave Lewis, CEO of Polatis. “We selected Poland as an ideal location for expansion due to its combination of a highly talented workforce and excellent cost advantages.

“The new facility will enable us to ramp up production and scale our operations to meet both near-term customer needs, and large volume programs where we are in trials now, such as those in FTTH, and backbone network operations.”

Polatis Ltd.