History 2003: Imation Chosen to Acquire Emtec Magstar Assets

The signs were there. Now it’s a done deal.

Following Emtec’s insolvency filing in April 2003, the German cartel office has agreed that Imation may purchase for $15 million in cash certain assets of Emtec Magnetics.

At stake are assets and IP relating to tape cartridges including 3480, 3490 and 3590 Magstar cartridges (the new IBM 3592 is manufactured by Fujifilm), for which Emtec was a major manufacturer.

For Imation, the reasoning is to “ensure the long-term worldwide availability of legacy tape products.” In other words, to have a monopoly in manufacturing from now on, which could well lead to a price hike.

According to an Emtec internal source, next March 2004, Imation will disassemble the machines that produce the computer tapes, located in Emtec facilities in Willstatt, Germany, in order to move some of them to plants in USA.

The brand name Emtec has also been acquired, but only for the products based on computer tapes, and not any others.

Our source also said that subsidiaries of Emtec will continue to distribute these cartridges under the Emtec name until next February, after which they will probably use the RPS brand name.

Fujifilm, which has a plant in Kleve, near Willstatt, and the former management of Emtec Magnetics have reportedly attempted to block this acquisition, arguing it would give Imation a monopoly on certain magnetic tape cartridges.

Without Emtec, Europe no longer boasts any cartridge makers. There remain only one American manufacturer, Imation, and 5 Japanese firms, Fujifilm, Maxell, Mitsubishi, Verbatim, Sony and TDK (along with Quantegy and Matsushita for certain products only).

Of the bunch, Fujifilm is doing particularly well, thanks to its ATOMM and now its Nanocubic magnetic technology. The latter uses either needleshaped metal or plate-shaped barium-ferrite particles.

IBM, an Imation partner since way back, turned a few heads when it announced that it was going with Fujifilm cartridges, exclusively, for its most recent high-end 3592 drives.

Imation is also an exclusive supplier of the cartridges used by StorageTek for its high-end tape drives, in particular its 98×0 line.

There too, Imation got a surprise: StorageTek has just announced media development agreements with Imation and Fujifilm, again in Nanocubic technology, this time for next gen tape drive media.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 191 on December 2003 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.