LASER turned 50 this year, and the global photonics industry met at LASER World of PHOTONICS in Munich from 27th to 30th June 2023, with a new record number of visitors confirming LASER’s status as the world’s leading trade fair of the photonics industry. World of QUANTUM met for the second time, and the international scientific elite also came together for six days at the World of Photonics Congress. For the first time, automatica, the leading trade fair for robotics and automation, took place in parallel.
LASER World of Photonics 2023 welcomed over 1,300 exhibitors from more than 40 countries and regions, and approximately 40,000 trade fair visitors from around 70 countries and regions. After Germany, the top exhibiting and visiting country was the UK.
CC Messe München
CC Messe München
Photonics Scotland was in attendance to represent our members and raise awareness of the Scottish photonics cluster. The team was based on the UK Pavilion, and our member organisations Anchored In, Clyde HSI, Coherent, Fraunhofer UK, Helia Photonics, Skylark, and PowerPhotonic were also exhibiting at the trade fair, with many others attending the congress or ‘walking the show’.
Having the opportunity to meet with our international counterparts, raise awareness of the capabilities of the Scottish photonics sector and discuss shared topics of interest was a key part of the trip. We participated in the Global Photonics Alliance meeting, with clusters from Austria, Canada, England, Finland, Germany, Japan, Switzerland and USA, and representatives from SPIE, where discussed issues affecting all our clusters, upcoming events, and potential opportunities to collaborate. Photonics Scotland took part in the Optics and Photonics Cluster Berlin Brandenburg special International Breakfast, where there was also representation from Czech Republic, France, Germany, Netherlands, and Poland.
This year Photonics Scotland was also invited to participate in the Photonics4Industry ClusterXchange which provided a great opportunity to network with other European photonics clusters and meet the organisations within their networks.
Other highlights included attending networking events organised by OPTICA, OptoNet e.V., Photonics21, PhotonicsNL, the Canadian Embassy and SPIE where we were able to expand our network and raise awareness of Scotland’s photonics capabilities and fly the flag for the Scottish photonics cluster.
LASER World of PHOTONICS was, as always, a great reminder about what an important role photonics plays in the world today.
The next LASER World of PHOTONICS and World of QUANTUM will take place together with automatica at the Messe München exhibition centre from 24th – 27th June 2025. The next World of Photonics Congress runs parallelly from 22nd – 27th June 2025.