___________________________________________________________________________________ LightPath Technologies
working out beautifully. These acquisitions have helped to accelerate the redirection of the company significantly.”
Combining acquisitions with internal strategic investment have been the driving factors behind LightPath’ s tremendous growth in 2025. Typically these optical systems are built using key minerals called Germanium as the main material, which is sourced from China – creating a challenge for the company; one they overcame with innovation.“ China has been controlling the export of those materials as part of the US trade disagreement,” Sam elaborates.“ Exactly three years ago, we invested in developing an alternative to Germanium. With this exclusive material, we no longer rely on Germanium to build and produce cameras. After acquiring G5 Infrared, they were able to start using our materials, so in short, we were able to secure our own supply chain, which is the primary factor for substantial growth.”
Comprising of chalcogenide glass, LightPath developed a portfolio of glass materials labelled BlackDiamond to replace the use of Germanium and improve overall performance of its systems. With some materials being made internally, the remainder were created and licensed from US government laboratories, and are designed to form smaller, more effective systems.“ Interestingly, this is an area that’ s had little innovation in around 30 or 40 years, so the new materials we introduced have had a massive impact,” continues Sam.“ Following the supply chain issues that we eventually overcame, we now invest much more in research and development( R & D) and there was heavy investment in developing the BlackDiamond chalcogenide glass over the past three years. Presently, our investment is implementing them into the systems and building products around them, so we’ ve increased our R & D spend considerably. We expect it to continue accelerated growth for the next two or three years, at least.”
manufacturing-today. com 137