History (1997): Coming Soon From IBM World’s Largest Disk Platter Plant

“We expect that our facility for disk platter manufacturing in the U.S. will be the largest in the world when completed by mid-97,” said Tony Razouk, IBM’s director of disk manufacturing.

Until now, IBM placed its emphasis mainly in components on the production of MR heads, although the company had also invested significantly in the making of magnetic platters.

The latter, produced at a 316,000 square-foot facility in San Jose, CA, are then integrated into mobile and server HDDs. No production figures were furnished by the company.

At the same time, IBM has established Shenzhen Hailiang Storage Products Co. Ltd. (HSPC), a joint venture with China Great Wall Computer Shenzhen Company and Shenzhen Kaifa Technology Company Limited.

HSPC, based in Shenzhen Science and Industry Park, will manufacture MR head gimbal assemblies.

IBM holds 80% of the equity, with the other 2 participants each holding 10% of the venture chaired jointly by Wang Zhi, COB of Great Wall and GM Tadashi Maru, also manager of China operations at IBM Fujisawa Mobile and Entry Server Storage operations.

HGAs are expected to be produced in the next few weeks. When fully operational, annual production capacity is expected to be 30 million units.

The same 3 partners had previously founded another joint venture in September 1995, called Shenzhen GKI Electronics Company Limited, in order to develop and produce circuit cards.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue 111, published on April 1997.