Fibercore Acquisition Gains Fibertronix’s Oil and Gas Market

4 September 2014—Specialty optical fiber developer and manufacturer Fibercore (Southampton, England) announced this week the acquisition of Fibertronix (Huiksvall, Sweden), which specializes in optical fiber for harsh environment applications such as medical settings and oil and gas industries.

The acquisition will expand Fibercore’s product portfolio in the oil and gas sector, in addition to their presence in medical, aerospace, defense and telecom fields. The fiber technology of Fibertronix, originally developed at Acreo Swedish ICT research institute (Kista, Sweden) and spun out in 2008, includes high-temperature polyimide specialty fibers, pure-core, high numerical aperture, large core and hermetic carbon fiber. Fibercore, a 1982 spin-out of the Optical Fiber Group at the University of Southampton, will be able to manufacture the Fibertronix specialty fiber at high volumes in response to demand in the oil and gas industry for harsh-environment cables.

Fibercore also makes multicore single-mode and polarization maintaining fiber, which complements the fiber Bragg grating portfolio and autoclavable coatings of Fibertronix. The financial terms of the acquisition were undisclosed.