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History (1995): Conner Peripherals and Seagate Investing in Singapore

For disk media manufacturing facility

To meet the growing demand for disk drives, Conner Peripherals (San Jose, CA) plans to build a new disk media manufacturing facility in Singapore, and Seagate Technology has undertaken a multi-million dollar investment in its media and substrate manufacturing operations in the US and in Asia.

Conner Peripherals is already an important, albeit little known, manufacturer of magnetic platters. Last year, it tripled production at its Milpitas, CA, disk media facility that now employs 700 people and can produce more than 25 million disks a year.

While current production fulfills more than 90% of our internal requirements, the new Singapore plant will position Conner to increase our presence as a key media supplier for the rest of the industry,” said COB and CEO Finis Conner.

CDD Singapore Ltd, a new wholly-owned subsidiary of Conner Peripherals, PTE Ltd., represents an initial capital investment of around $44 million and is scheduled to begin production of 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch media at a 133,000 square foot facility during the first half of 1996. The plant, which opened with 230 employees, will begin with one production line, expandable to three.

Production in California is now all 1,800Oe or higher coercivity media. Conner has demonstrated 3,000Oe and has applied for patents that suggest extension to 5,000Oe and more.

Current media support flying heights of 1.5micro inches and new developments will support lower heights and pseudo-contact recording.

According to Conner, its MINT (Magnetic Information Technology) manufacturing systems has the highest capacity sputtering line in the industry, and with full automation has the lowest capital cost per disk. A single line can produce 3,000 disks per hour. Today’s process uses no chlorofluocarbons (CFC’s) .

Seagate, another major consumer and producer of magnetic platters, has recently signed a subcontracting agreement with disk media-makers StorMedia to avoid any future shortages.

In addition, the company will up its own production, which is currently considerably large. It has already begun construction of a new 163,000 square-foot automated media facility in Singapore that will include Class 10 clean rooms, tool-to-tool conveyors and a totally automated material handling system. The plant is scheduled to begin shipping finished media in mid-96.

Seagate is also making a substantial capital investment in its existing media and substrate operations in Fremont and Anaheim, CA, in order to double its global production capability by the end of 1997. The additional robotics equipment in Anaheim will increase production of both aluminum and glass substrates.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue 91, published on August 1995.

Note: Conner Peripherals was acquired by Seagate in 1995 for $1.04 billion.

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