ANDOR TECHNOLOGY, the Northern Ireland company which develops and manufactures high-performance scientific digital cameras, expects sales in 2011 to “be double those of last year”.

The hi-tech firm announced a £1 million investment yesterday in a new research and development centre at its headquarters in Belfast.

Andor says its new “acceleration centre” Certus will not only help the company bring additional products to market that it says are “outside” its technology roadmap but it will also speed up the process of getting products to market.

It says it has invested heavily in people to get the project off the ground.

Andor intends to create a hot-house, high-delivery vehicle via Certus. “It is planned to use Certus for high-impact strategic products and we anticipate only one programme running at a time. The target for acceleration is to deliver the finished product in half the normal time.”

A £1.5 million expansion of Andor’s facility is also under way in Belfast which it says will add both additional production and engineering capacity.

Although Andor has reported strong trading through the second half of the year, it has also warned that the “global economic climate remains challenging”.

It says each of its markets is “delivering excellent growth” compared to the same period last year but the company believes that in order to support its future growth, its products must continue to be “innovative and address fast-growing, well-funded applications”.