Negotiating a Lease and Powering Jets

By Tech Bytes ANDREW WEBB Of the Journal

Emcore Corp. says a better deal on its east Albuquerque land lease will allow it to expand its operations here.

The Sommerset, N.J.-based materials company, which makes optical communications and photovoltaic cells here, plans to invest $2 million in a 20,000-square-foot expansion that will allow it to add at least 50 jobs in the Duke City.

It will also begin a new business here — expanding its photovoltaic business from powering satellites to terrestrial uses such as solar power generation for utilities, said chief operating officer Scott Massie.

The company has two 80,000-square-foot buildings here, one used as an optical component plant and the other dedicated to photovoltaic cells and other equipment. Both are in the Sandia Science and Technology Park, a patchwork of public and private land east of Sandia National Laboratories that is home to several technology companies.

The company owns both buildings and the land under one. But the 10 acres under the photovoltaic plant is owned by the state. Massie said the company was able to renegotiate an “onerous” lease from $130,000 per year to about $75,000. Massie credited State Land Commissioner Pat Lyons and Assistant Land Commissioner Jerry King for working out a better lease for the company, whose financial health has remained at the mercy of volatile markets for several years.

“They really sat down and worked to keep business in Albuquerque,” he said.

Emcore aims to move a photovoltaic panel company it bought in City of Industry, Calif., in 2002 to its expanded Albuquerque facility. Most of its photovoltaic contracts are for communications and government satellite power generation, which requires rugged, long-lasting devices whose prices are far higher than typical solar energy technology used here on Earth.

Over the last year, Massie said, the company has developed a terrestrial product using the same technology. Rather than typical solar panels, these devices will be solar concentrators — dish- shaped devices that reflect and concentrate sunlight on a photovoltaic cell. Such devices can be operated at up to 40 percent efficiency, while traditional panels are about 12 percent efficient.

The new products will be launched next year.

Of its 800 employees around the country, Emcore currently employs about 330 in Albuquerque.

Its communications component division was originally founded in Albuquerque as Micro Optical Devices, or MODE, and was bought by Emcore in 1998. That division employs about 150 now, up from a low of about 50 following a telecom industry bust that sent Emcore’s profits plummeting from $185 million in 2001 to $60 million in 2003.

The company reported $127 million in revenues for 2005, with a net loss of about $13 million.

In the last six months, the company has purchased four more subsidiaries in various tangentially related industries. Some of that business could also be moved here, Massie said.

“We look at Albuquerque as a very favorable place to do business,” he said.

KEEPING UP WITH THE ECLIPSES: Eclipse Aviation is apparently a little more bullish than its engine supplier on the number of $1.3 million jets expected to roll off the assembly line in the coming years.

The company, which two weeks ago began producing the first customer-ordered Eclipse 500 planes in anticipation of Federal Aviation Administration certification later this spring, says it plans to be producing 1,000 planes a year, or about 4 planes per day, within three years or so.

But engine maker Pratt & Whitney Canada last month told Flight International magazine it planned to manufacture about 1,200 PW600- family engines per year within four years. Very light jets under development from Cessna, Embraer and others are expected to use adaptations of that engine, as is Eclipse.

It seems that would leave several companies to scrabble over 1,200 engines per year.

So where will 1,000 gleaming new Eclipse 500s get their dual PW610F engines?

“Pratt is definitely ramping up,” says Eclipse spokesman Andrew Broom. “We’ve been working with them, and they tell us they will be able to support our production ramp.”

“They’re just not as aggressive in talking about it as we are,” he said.

AUSTIN OFFICE FOR EXAGEN: Albuquerque’s Exagen Diagnostics has opened a sales and business office in Austin, Texas, where it aims to take advantage of that city’s biotech worker pool as it begins marketing its first products.

Exagen makes diagnostic products that can determine the extent of an illness, allowing doctors to more accurately predict disease paths and design treatments. Its first product will be for breast cancer detection.

INTERGALACTIC LAYOVER? The Denver Post reports that Joshua Frankel, manager of a Truth or Consequences Best Western motel, has registered the Internet domain name www.spaceportlodging.com.

The under-construction Web site lauds the Hot Springs Motor Inn as the nearest lodging to the planned $225 million southwest regional spaceport, which is to be built beginning next year south of town.

But, Frankel tells the Post, he’s not aiming for the wellheeled adventurers who aim to pay Richard Branson $200,000 a pop for 2- hour rides into space.

“What’s going to fill my hotel will be all the people who want to see them go up,” he told the paper.

Andrew Webb covers technology for

the Journal. You can reach him at

823-3819 or

awebb@abqjournal.com.