In September, HORIBA will enter into the purchase agreement of the land for construction of a new research facility on the Campus of Ecole Polytechnique as part of the PARIS Saclay cluster.

The new facility will welcome the headquarter of the recently created holding for all HORIBA activities in Europe, HORIBA Europe Holding SAS, consolidating 350M EUR and 1700 employees in France, Germany, UK, Italy, Spain, … and serve as HORIBA European Research Centre. Building on the local teams of HORIBA Jobin Yvon, a world leader in optical spectroscopy, the research centre will develop advanced technologies, components, systems and applications for the benefit of HORIBA Automotive, Medical, Process & Environmental, Semiconductor and Scientific business segments.

The facility will be initially 7500 m2 with a late 2011 move in, and the possibility to expand to 18000 m2 in later phases.

PARIS Saclay cluster:

The PARIS Saclay cluster is an initiative of the French Government and local authorities to bring together the unique high technology resources of the south of Paris area and generate a worldclass development ecosystem based on education, research and business innovation, comparable to the Silicon Valley in California or Cambridge in the UK.

The wider campus will welcome around 47000 students, with 2000 PhDs delivered per year, 17000 public researchers, including five Fields Medals and four Nobelists, and 20000 private researchers. The cluster will represent 8% of all European Union R&D spending.

The French Government will invest in the Campus infrastructure and shared services, facilitating easy public transportation access to the network of European superfast trains and two international airports, and encourage private investment through a favourable R&D tax scheme.

Main entities either located on the campus, or in the process of being relocated, are:

Academia: Paris University, Ecole Normale Superieure (Cachan), HEC business school, Ecole Polytechnique, Ecole Centrale, Optical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Agricultural Engineering, Telecom Engineering Schools, …

Research: Extreme Light Institute (ELI, exawatt laser), DIGITEO information technology institute operated by INRIA (national IT research agency), Physics Triangle, NanoInnov and NanoSciences centres for the development of nanosystems operated respectively by CEA (nuclear agency) and CNRS (national scientific research agency), NeuroSpin medical imaging facility, Synchrotron SOLEIL, System@tic digital systems network, …

Industry: Danone research centre (food), EDF research centre (energy), Thales research centre (space and defense electronics and systems), Total photovoltaic pilot plant (energy), Microsoft laboratory (software), …

Cooperation:

Deepening its existing relations with the above entities, and creating new ones, HORIBA targets to develop next strategic core technologies for its business segments, and, in return to bring a specific contribution to the Campus.

As an example, HORIBA Jobin Yvon will develop with the neighbouring Extreme Light Institute the unique diffraction gratings needed to achieve exawatt laser performance, using the world largest commercial holography clean room built at the center of the new facility. With Ecole Polytechnique and Optical Engineering School, innovative biophotonics concepts will be researched to prepare advanced medical diagnosis solutions, while the support of DIGITEO will help advance the automatization of gas measurement platforms for the automotive industry or environmental monitoring. To anticipate a general trend to miniaturize equipments, work with Nano Innov will lead to lab-on-a-chip components for the next generation of scientific instruments, while solutions derived from Semicon industry for the control of photovoltaic fabrication and cell panel metrology will be researched with Total pilot fab teams.

Facilitated by the Campus proximities and open innovation emphasis, HORIBA will also help smaller companies and start-ups access worldwide instrumentation markets, by offering the reach of its dense established global distribution network, as well as its product engineering and manufacturing know-how. With larger companies joining the cluster, HORIBA will propose a complementary valorization of their technological breakthroughs, achieved typically for defence or aerospace systems, in its own smaller commercial products, thus providing a second access to the market, like for example repackaging components developed by Thales Research & Technology for communication systems into its laboratory analyzers.

Through this “Open and Fair” integration in the PARIS Saclay ecosystem, a root in the French and European societies, HORIBA will also create favourable conditions to recruit the young scientific and business talents critical to success in the 21st century, offering them to share its “Joy and Fun” philosophy.