[Usa] Corning To Add Jobs And Expand Capacity

Corning Inc, the maker of glass fibre used in high-speed communications, plans to add 700 jobs and spend $50m to expand a plant in Erwin, New York, to keep up with soaring demand for optical amplifiers. The decisions comes less than 3 months after Corning said it would spend $50m and hire about 1,000 workers to set up a similar plant in Benton Township, Pennsylvania. Demand for optical amplifiers has surged as customers race to build fibre-optic networks to support the Internet. Industry analysts estimate the optical-networking market will keep growing by more than 50%/year over the next several years, rising to more than $23bn in 2003, from $6bn last year.