Cork chosen for 25 research jobs

A Swiss manufacturer of semiconductors that are used in global positioning systems (GPS) is to create 25 highly skilled research and development jobs in Cork.

The company, u-blox is set to invest €1m in a new Cork office which will be involved in the design of the semiconductors at the heart of GPS systems.

The CEO of u-blox, Thomas Seiler, said Cork was selected as the site for the new research centre due to the calibre of employees available in the region.

“We were looking for a location with talented people. We needed people with talent to complement what we do. Cork has a strong business environment which attracted us,” said Mr Seiler.

U-blox is a semiconductor company which integrates software into the chips that it makes and sells to manufacturers of consumer electronic goods, industries who want to keep track of inventory and the automotive sector who use the chips as part of a car’s satellite navigation system.

Head of wireless products development at u-blox, Andreas Thiel, said demand for the hi-tech products that the Cork facility will design is set to increase. “We anticipate a huge demand for LTE connectivity driven by next-generation applications that rely on machine-to-machine communications, to achieve our goal of market leadership in this sector, we have invested in Cork, a city renowned for its high concentration of engineering talent, especially in the area of signal processing.”

Mr Seiler said the presence of the Tyndall Institute, which is engaged in advanced research in the semiconductor space, was not a deciding factor in the decision to locate in Cork but he believed it helped to foster the correct environment for u-blox to locate here.

“It is a chicken and egg situation: the more research in an area the more jobs in that area and yet more research,” he said.

The Cork office will be responsible for designing and characterising the hardware and software for state-of-the-art integrated silicon radios. The office will be located in Riverview Business Park in Mahon.

U-blox has been a huge success story since it was founded in 1997. The company employs 400 people in 60 countries and last year it had a revenues of €173m.

The company has been active in acquisitions, buying Finish-based Fastrax Oy for €13m as part of its global expansion.