inPhocal has a lot to celebrate. The team recently blew out candles for its fifth anniversary. Two weeks later, it performed a memorable ribbon-cutting ceremony on its new HTC 32 office space with its very own laser system.
As a deep tech scale-up, inPhocal develops advanced high-precision laser beam technology. The long focus depth of its beam speeds up laser marking systems and allows marking on curved surfaces without compromising quality.
"We invented a new optical technology that makes laser processes more efficient," says Robert van Tankeren, co-founder and CEO at inPhocal.
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The technology is innovative, but to the team, that’s not the end goal. They want to use it to eliminate waste.
With five billion cans or bottles sold every day, inPhocal targets laser marking in the marking industry and strives to have its laser technology replace the ink-printed expiration dates on every one of these beverages . inPhocal makes it possible to laser mark unique QR codes on the beverages. This is not possible with the speed of current systems, so it’s a new, unique selling point.
“If you add all the ink used for this application worldwide, it's about 160 million liters of ink that end up in the environment. Laser technology could be an alternative to ink, but the current laser technology isn't fast enough to meet the requirements that the market needs,” says van Tankeren.
“Big international beverage companies don't want to slow down the production lines,” he continues. “The laser technology has to be faster and by extending the focus depth, our optical technology increases the speed of the laser system by almost three times. If you compare it to curved surfaces, we come as close as 10 times speed efficiency and outperform inkjet.”
According to Martijn Boerkamp, inPhocal CTO, “Our laser system is already at three times the marking speed of other systems, and we will upgrade later to more than four times faster marking speed.”
It becomes a win-win outcome. Bottling facilities get a faster and virtually maintenance-free laser system compared to an ink-based system and eliminate the negative environmental impact of the ink.
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inPhocal’s first mission is clear. But while laser marking for bottling facilities is the market entry point, inPhocal has long term ambitions to enter the semiconductor business in laser cutting.
The company celebrated its five-year milestone not far from where it was born right here on Campus.
It started as an idea around CERN technology. Going through the HighTechXL venture building program in 2019, the startup built out its founder team to include commercial and finance expertise, made a business plan and landed funding.
The team has since refined the technology, added their own intellectual property, secured patents and raised more funding. With laser units on production lines at bottling facilities and a growing team of 20 people, inPhocal is staying on Campus and sees the ecosystem as a key to its past and future growth.
After emerging from the virtual work environment of the pandemic, the physical presence on Campus was a game changer for the team. Suddenly, the team could share valuable knowledge, become part of the innovative community, have in-house lab space and take over surplus equipment from other companies.
“The amount of innovation that takes place here and the number of companies that are located here – from the big companies like Philips, Signify, ASML – to the startup community … in this ecosystem, you can share the experience,” van Tankeren says. “We literally take over some of the surplus of the equipment that other companies no longer need. And that kind of collaboration, I think, is unique in the world.”
While not a large company, inPhocal has found support, flexibility and cooperation from HTCE in its scale-up stage.
“In the growth path that inPhocal had over the past few years, we quickly realized that we needed more office space. Our office at HTC 27 simply wasn’t big enough,” said van Tankeren. “We were exploring other options and at the end, we chose to stay at the High Tech Campus. There’s an in-between period where we are growing from 20+ people to 50+ people in the next few years. While we’re not pre-revenue, we are definitely not profitable. In order to move to the next big office, we would require some flexibility and some cooperation from the Campus, and they were excellent in providing us exactly that.”
With a production facility outside the Netherlands, inPhocal is developing a model where it can scale up quickly by duplicating that production facility in any location worldwide, all the while retaining its headquarters here in Eindhoven.
Though the company is still growing, inPhocal has clear plans for its future workspace.
“We are going to double and triple in size in the next few years,” says van Tankeren. “We have the capability here in the office and we discussed with the Campus an option for an additional wing in this same building. I think this is an ideal opportunity for us to expand the business from one central location.”
As CEO, he is not worried about being able to attract new employees. “It really helps convince the international community to move and help the innovation that is taking place here.”
Laser marking is just the beginning for inPhocal. Its platform technology has endless applications – and endless impact.
“What I love about our technology is that it has multiple applications in different fields, even as far as the semiconductor field, the automotive industry or healthcare. Laser processes are used in these markets and our technology would make them more efficient.”
“There's always a level of efficiency that our technology can improve on, meaning you would need less power to do what is already being done in that market or you need less process steps for production. We eliminate an additional level of waste that is no longer needed, making the world a bit of a better place.”
The inPhocal team hopes to one day become a tech giant with its huge market potential. In the meantime, the Campus is providing the room for that growth, not only now, but also when it reaches its big dreams.
High Tech Campus is a place to start, scale and STAY. As your company grows, the Campus is growing with you, with office space, technical facilities and support that allow you to scale easily. Download our comprehensive guide and join the HTCE ecosystem.