Paterna, Valencia, Spain — September 18, 2026
VLC Photonics, a Hitachi Group company, today announced the completion of the transfer of its photonic integrated circuit (PIC) testing and assembly operations to its new headquarters at the Táctica Industrial Park in Paterna, Valencia. The move concludes a phased relocation that began with the transfer of the company’s non-technical teams to the new offices in November 2025.
The new facility spans 1,545 m² (16,600 sq. ft.), comprising 315 m² of cleanroom space, 480 m² of laboratories, and 750 m² of offices. The cleanroom is certified to ISO Class 7 (Class 10,000) with full ESD protection, and the R&D characterization is performed in an adjacent ISO Class 8 laboratory. All testing, assembly, and metrology equipment and instrumentation are now installed and operating at the new site.
Purpose-built infrastructure for PIC test and assembly
The relocated infrastructure supports the full range of characterization and test services VLC Photonics offers to PIC developing companies, photonic foundries, system integrators, and research organizations:
- Wafer-level testing with fully automated probe alignment at nanometer precision, both for vertical and edge coupling through trenches, covering optical, electrical DC, and RF parameters.
- Die-level testing on both semi-automated and fully automated platforms, supporting edge and vertical grating coupling, with automated chip and fiber pick, place, and attachment, and throughput exceeding 1,000 dies per month.
- Packaged PIC testing for chip-on-board and chip-on-carrier assemblies.
- Electrical characterization up to 110 GHz, with NRZ and PAM4 signal generation and real-time analysis at 256 GSa/s for eye diagram and bit error rate evaluation.
- Optical characterization from 350 nm to 4,000 nm, spanning visible, near-infrared, and mid-infrared wavelengths, including full polarization control.
- Assembly capabilities for test boards, including semi-automatic wire bonding, flip-chip attachment, fiber array attachment, and high-precision 2D/3D optical metrology.
- Reliability testing, including thermal test in a humidity-controlled climatic chamber for high-temperature operating life (HTOL), high-temperature storage (HTS), temperature cycling (TC), thermal shock (TS), damp heat/85°C-85%RH (THB), highly accelerated stress testing (HAST/uHAST).
Operating a dedicated, company-controlled environment allows VLC Photonics to schedule test campaigns independently, maintain full control over the confidentiality of customer samples and data within a single secured chain of custody, and allocate capacity from R&D toward low- and mid-volume test and assembly work as customer demand grows, with possibility to transfer the processes to larger volume partners in collaboration with Hitachi. The facility retains a built-in cleanroom expansion zone to accommodate further capacity without structural modification.
Iñigo Artundo, CEO, VLC Photonics:
Moving our labs is not something a test house does lightly, especially after having grown over 15 years on our previous location. Completing the transfer with every system back in operation in record time is a credit to our engineering team. What matters to our customers is what it means: we now control our own environment end to end, which means we set the schedule, we protect the samples, and we can scale capacity as the market demands . Photonic integration is moving from prototype volumes toward real production volumes, and this facility is how we help our customers reach there faster and more reliable, in a cost cost-effective
VLC Photonics, founded in 2011 as a spin-off of the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), still maintains, after the move, an active presence on the university high-tech campus for R&D collaborations, and with the local PIXEurope photonics pilot line.
The announcement comes ahead of ECOC 2026, held also at Spain in Malaga from September 21 to 23, where VLC Photonics will be exhibiting at booth #2058, and the company invites customers and partners to schedule a visit afterwards.
About VLC Photonics (a Hitachi Group company)
VLC Photonics is a photonic design and testing house based in Paterna, Valencia, Spain, specializing in photonic integrated circuits (PICs) for applications in telecommunications, sensing, quantum optics, LiDAR, and biophotonics. Founded in 2011, the company operates under a fabless model, focusing on design, prototyping, testing, and packaging.
