History (1992): Verbatim Acquires Carlisle Subsidiary

Verbatim Corp. (Charlotte, NC), a subsidiary of the Japanese company Mitsubishi Kasei Corp., has reached an agreement to purchase the quarter-inch data cartridge business-related assets from Carlisle Memory Products Group (San Diego, CA), a subsidiary of Carlisle companies Inc. (Syracuse, NY).

After acquiring the magneto-optical disk manufacturing activity of PDO (Philips and DuPont Optical) in the US, Mitsubishi Kasei is strengthening its position among the worldwide leaders in computer media.

“Our product line now includes rewritable, WORM, and O-ROM optical media, a complete range of floppy disks (20MB+), and a full spectrum of tape products, including data cassettes, half-inch reel tape, data certified 4mm and 8mm data cartridges, 3480 cartridges, and quarter-inch data cartridges, “said William Kopatich, VP of Verbatim.

Carlisle Memory Products (CMP) catalog included a selection of QIC cartridqes, 4mm and 8mm DATs, as well as optical disks.

But CMP was mostly the second worldwide manufacturer of QIC cartridges behind 3M, and in front of Sony and Gigatek.

After this acquisition, only two Japanese and two US (with Gigatek, a much smaller company) manufacturers are left, the others actually only assemble. For 4mm and 8mm helical scan cartridges, CMP only assembled the cartridges, after buying the tapes from the two largest manufacturers Sony and Hitachi/Maxell.

CMP’s optical disks come from Daicel.

The company’s sales are forecasted to reach close to $60 million in 1992, according to Gérard Larnaudy GM of Carlisle France.

CMP owns two plants, one in San Diego, CA, the other one in Tijuana (Mexico). It handles subsidiaries for Europe in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and UK.

Carlisle Companies is a Fortune 500 company, supplier of diverse industrial materials and products consisting primarily of rubber, plastic and metal content. To diversify its activity, in 1977, first it acquired Graham Magnetics, a 13-year old company that manufactured half-inch tapes in reels or cartridges. Then, in 1986, it bought over Data Electronics Inc. (DEi), specialized in QIC cartridge activities since 1974 (DEi also manufactured QIC drives, but quit to focus exclusively on the media).

CMP was established in 1988 with the merging of DEi and Graham Magnetics. But in 1991, the employees took it over to form a new Graham Magnetics, independent since January 1, 1992. It was then only involved in QIC cartridges.

Mitsubishi Kasei is now probably number two in worldwide computer media, behind 3M. Until now, Verbatim sold QIC cartridges that happened to be supplied by Carlisle (at that time, as a strange fact, DEi had bought Verbatim’s QIC patents).

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠51, published on April 1992.