About Ceradyne, Inc.

Headquartered in Costa Mesa, California, Ceradyne Inc. develops, manufactures and markets advanced technical ceramic products and components for a wide range of uses: military, defense, industrial, diesel/automotive, consumer, and microwave tube applications. Because of the unique characteristics of advanced ceramics — ability to withstand extremely high temperatures; hardness; light weight; resistance to friction, wear and corrosion; and special electrical properties — Ceradyne products and components offer considerable advantages over those made of conventional materials, such as steel, other metals, glass, and plastics.

Founded in 1967, Ceradyne has diversified its advanced technical ceramic product lines to capture opportunities created by growing demands for better materials performance. The Company continues to develop new uses for ceramics and offers a diversified line of high-performance ceramics products for wide variety of markets. In late 2004, the company added new product lines and new markets — and one of the world's leading suppliers of starting powders for manufacturing advanced ceramics products — by acquiring ESK of Kempten, Germany.

Products and Markets

Products include lightweight armor for military personnel, helicopters, and land and sea-going vehicles; defense missile nose cones (radomes); wear-resistant parts for diesel engines; abrasion-resistant parts for industrial machinery for tooling and cutting; heat and corrosion-resistant chambers and rollers for silicon and glass processing; translucent orthodontic brackets (braces); and components for microwave tubes. Furthermore Ceradyne is the only vertically integrated manufacturer of neutron absorption materials that offers a diverse range of extruded and rolled products for spent nuclear fuel containment. These products provide market-leading performance for neutron absorption in both wet and dry spent nuclear fuel storage and/or transport applications.

For more: www.ceradyne.com