Charlie Peppiatt has served as Chief Executive Officer of Gooch & Housego since September 2022. He joined the company from TT Electronics, where he was Executive Vice President following TT’s acquisition of Stadium Group plc. Prior to that, Charlie served as Chief Executive Officer of Stadium Group from 2013 until its acquisition in 2018.
Earlier in his career, he held senior operational leadership roles at Laird plc, a FTSE 250 electronics company, including Vice President of Global Operations. Over more than three decades in high-technology manufacturing, Charlie has led global businesses supplying advanced electronics and engineered solutions into the medical, telecommunications, industrial, and aerospace & defense sectors.
Tell us about your company.
Gooch & Housego (G&H) is a global photonics engineering and manufacturing company specializing in high-performance optical components, subsystems, and systems. We operate across the full photonics value chain, from materials and crystal growth through precision optics, fiber optics, acousto-optics, and electro-optics, all the way to integrated optical assemblies.
Our technologies sit inside many of the world’s most demanding applications, including semiconductor manufacturing, telecommunications infrastructure, quantum technologies, aerospace and defense systems, and life sciences instrumentation.
What differentiates G&H is our ability to combine deep photonics expertise with vertically integrated manufacturing. Many customers come to us when they need a partner who can move beyond individual optical components and help engineer a complete optical subsystem that performs reliably in real-world environments.
Today we operate across multiple engineering and manufacturing sites in the U.S., U.K., and Europe, with partners in Asia, supporting global customers who rely on photonics to enable next-generation technologies.
What problems are you solving?
Photonics is often the enabling technology behind advances in computing, communications, and sensing. The challenge is that optical systems must deliver extremely high precision and stability while operating in complex environments.
Our role is to help customers solve those engineering challenges.
For example, semiconductor manufacturing tools require optical components and laser control systems that can maintain stability and precision at extreme levels of miniaturization even down to the nano-scale. In telecommunications infrastructure, reliability is critical because components deployed in subsea networks must operate unattended for decades. In emerging fields like quantum computing and fusion energy research, photonic components must perform with exceptional accuracy and repeatability.
We work closely with customers to engineer optical solutions that meet those requirements while also being manufacturable at scale. That combination of performance and production readiness is where much of the real innovation happens.
What application areas are your strongest?
G&H has strong positions in several high-growth photonics markets.
Semiconductor and advanced manufacturing are key areas for us, where our optical components and systems support laser processing, metrology, and precision instrumentation used in semiconductor fabrication.
Telecommunications is another major sector, particularly in high-reliability fiber optic components used in subsea communication networks. These networks carry most of the global data traffic and require optical components with extremely long operational lifetimes.
We also support life sciences and medical instrumentation, providing precision optics and optical subsystems used in imaging, diagnostics, and analytical equipment.
In addition, we are seeing increasing demand from emerging technologies such as quantum computing, advanced sensing, and nuclear fusion research, where photonics play a critical enabling role.
What keeps your customers up at night?
For most of our customers, the biggest challenge is balancing performance, reliability, and scalability.
Many photonics solutions work well in laboratory environments but become much harder to deploy reliably in real-world systems or high-volume manufacturing. Optical alignment tolerances, thermal stability, and long-term reliability can all impact system performance.
Customers also face increasing pressure to accelerate development timelines while ensuring that new technologies can scale into production.
That is why they often look for partners who can combine optical design expertise with manufacturing capability. By working collaboratively early in the design process, we can help ensure that optical systems are optimized not only for performance but also for manufacturability and long-term reliability.
What does the competitive landscape look like and how do you differentiate?
Photonics is a diverse ecosystem with many specialized suppliers focused on individual technologies or components.
G&H differentiates itself through the breadth of our photonics capabilities and our ability to integrate them. Because we work across multiple optical technologies, including acousto-optics, electro-optics, fiber optics, and precision optics, we can design solutions that combine these elements into a single integrated system.
Vertical integration is another important differentiator. By controlling critical processes such as crystal growth, optical fabrication, and advanced assembly, we can maintain tight control over quality, performance, and supply chain reliability.
Finally, our engineering culture is built around close collaboration with customers. Many of our most successful projects begin as joint development programs where we work alongside the customer’s engineering teams to solve complex optical challenges.
What new features or technologies are you working on?
We are investing in several areas where photonics will play an increasingly important role.
One is advanced fiber optic technologies that support the growing capacity demands of global communications infrastructure. This includes high-reliability fiber components designed for long-lifetime operation in subsea networks.
Another is photonics solutions for quantum technologies. These systems often require extremely precise optical control, and our expertise in acousto-optic and electro-optic devices is well suited to these applications.
We are also continuing to develop more integrated optical subsystems that combine multiple photonic technologies into compact, robust solutions for demanding environments.
Across all of these areas, our focus is on helping customers move from research and prototype stages into scalable production.
How do customers normally engage with your company?
Most engagements begin with a technical discussion around a specific challenge or application requirement.
In some cases, customers are looking for a specific optical component or assembly. In other instances, they need help designing an optical subsystem or solving a broader system-level problem.
Our engineering teams work closely with customers to understand the application, define the performance requirements, and identify the most effective solution. That collaboration often continues through prototyping, validation, and eventually production.
Because photonics systems are highly application-specific, long-term partnerships are common. Many of our customer relationships span years or even decades as technologies evolve and new programs are developed.
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