A series of packaging stories to showcase our capabilities, starting with Hermiticity.
Hermiticity: A Sort of Homecoming
In a cleanroom tucked inside the EPIC Centre in Paignton, Devon, the whirring of vacuum pumps and the glow of seam sealers are the soundtrack of a quiet British resurgence. The company behind the hum is Bay Photonics—a name that, to the casual observer, may not ring out. But to those who’ve been watching the UK’s photonics landscape, it represents something rarer: a kind of industrial memory, and now, a hi-tech renaissance.
Bay Photonics was founded in 2007 by just two people—veterans of a golden era in UK optoelectronics manufacturing. Before everything changed, they were part of Nortel Networks, one of the great titans of telecoms, which in the late 1990s was churning out tens of thousands of hermetically sealed photonic components every week in Paignton: lasers, detectors, modulators, all destined for global fibre networks.
It was exacting work. These devices had to perform flawlessly for decades, often in remote or inaccessible locations. Hermetic packaging wasn’t optional—it was essential.
But by the early 2000s, the winds shifted. Manufacturing was offshored to Southeast Asia, and with it went thousands of jobs and a vast reservoir of specialised knowledge. The UK, once a stronghold of photonic manufacturing, seemed on the brink of forgetting how to do what it had once done best.
That’s when Bay Photonics lit a small but defiant flame. It started modestly—just a couple of engineers, some second-hand equipment, and a deep belief that this knowledge still mattered. Over the years, they quietly kept the skills alive: building fixtures, training staff, and sealing tiny metal boxes with a precision that bordered on the artistic.
Fast forward to the 2020s, and the world came knocking again. Quantum technologies—especially quantum computing, sensing, and secure communications—depend on exquisitely stable, cooled photonic devices. These aren’t off-the-shelf parts. They require packaging that can withstand extreme environments: ultra-low temperatures, vacuum chambers, and decades-long missions with zero room for error.
Bay Photonics was ready. By 2020, the company began to scale up—rapidly. Today, they’re 33 strong and growing fast, with clients across the UK quantum technologies program and beyond.
Their home is the EPIC Centre—the Electronics and Photonics Innovation Centre—purpose-built in the wake of Nortel’s collapse to nurture the next generation of hi-tech firms. It’s a kind of industrial refuge, a reminder that even after major industry exoduses, expertise can be reborn, and even return home.
Keep the light on – and the world out?
Our fibre splices are executed using precision fusion splicing techniques to achieve minimal insertion loss and low back-reflection. Each splice is subsequently recoated with an index-matched polymer, ensuring mechanical robustness, environmental protection and maintaining efficient use of internal package volume.
At the heart of Bay Photonics’ work is hermetic packaging: the art of building tiny, sealed environments where semiconductor light sources and detectors can live unbothered by the outside world.
Whether it’s in a TO can—a metal can with a glass window for lasers and photodiodes—or a bespoke gold box designed for complex quantum assemblies, the goal is always the same: to protect.
Their tools are both simple and sophisticated. Resistive seam sealers clamp down lids and run current through electrodes, generating heat at precisely the right spots to weld without damaging what’s inside. Projection welders use raised metal points that collapse under current and pressure to form perfect joints. Both techniques are old-school, in the best way—reliable, clean, and exquisitely repeatable.
After sealing, every package goes through helium leak testing, using mass spectrometry to detect the faintest sign of gas escaping or intruding. If even a few helium atoms can get through, so can moisture. And moisture, in photonics, is the enemy.
A knowledge homecoming
Bay Photonics isn’t just building packages. They’re rebuilding a legacy. The skills involved in photonic packaging—tooling, sealing, testing, debugging thermomechanical performance—can’t be learned overnight. They’re passed on, refined, sometimes rediscovered. In that sense, Bay Photonics is as much a knowledge steward as a business.
In a way, hermiticity—the act of sealing something away to preserve it—has become a metaphor for the company itself. They kept the know-how sealed tight during the lean years. And now, with quantum technologies on the rise and UK innovation policy turning back toward sovereign capability, they’ve cracked open the box again.
It turns out, the flame never went out. It just needed the right conditions to burn brighter.
What other services do we offer?
We specialise in photonics assembly and packaging serviced that combine precision, flexibility and reliability. This includes Die bonding, wire bonding, optical alignment, fibre array, fibre alignment and hermetic sealing. Our expertise also extends to hybrid co-packaging, merging optics with electronics, ceramics and TECs. For more information check out our services page by clicking here.
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