History (1994): Plasmon Acquires Optical Jukebox Manufacturer International Data Engineering

For the second time, an European optical media manufacturer is acquiring an US jukebox manufacturer.

After ATG, who bought Cygnet, Plasmon Plc (Royston,UK), has acquired International Data Engineering or IDE (Minneapolis, MN), this one is going to become an operating division of Plasmon and should work as an independent company keeping its management.

In FY93, ending in March of last year, the UK company recorded sales of £292,000.

Plasmon counts three business units.

Plasmon Data Systems Ltd. was one of the first manufacturers of 5.25-inch patented moth-eye WORM optical media.

After an agreement with Panasonic in 1991, it also manufactured 5.25-inch WORM media for Panasonic’s family of multifunction phase-change optical disk drives.

The following year, the company signed an agreement with Ciba-Geigg on recordable CD technology.

Plasmon is one of the few European manufacturers of optical disks with Philips LMS, Hoechst and ATG-Cygnet.

Plasmon Data Systems Inc. (Milpitas, CA) and Reflection Systems Ltd. (Royston, U.K.) distribute optical disk subsystems in the U.S. and in Europe respectively. Reflection is a 55% subsidiary of Plasmon and a 46% one of Magstore, and owns subsidiaries in Munich (Germany) and Vélizy (France).

On its side, IDE is a private company, a pioneer and a leader in the manufacturing of auto-changers for 3.5-inch and 5.25-inch optical disk cartridges. Plasmon’s subsidiaries already sold IDE’s and Panasonic’s jukeboxes.

Last year, Plasmon signed an agreement with DISC to resell its jukeboxes but they don’t really compete with IDE’s in a lower range. IDE’s main competitor is Hewlett-Packard, and others which include Eastman Kodak, MOST/Adic, Nichimen, Nippon Texas, NKK, Panasonic and Ricoh.

Plasmon was formed by Comtech Corp. in 1982. There was a management buy-out from Comtech in 1987, the year Plasmon announced second source WORM media for IBM 3363 optical drives.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠73, published on February 1994.