Despairing of finding a buyer for the disk drive manufacturing side that made up half of its Newbury Data Recording acquisition – it would be cheaper for an incoming manufacturer to start from scratch than to take the business over – FKI Babcock Plc has closed the disk drive arm of the business, at a cost of about 200 jobs. DRI’s printer and Newbury Data display terminals businesses will be concentrated at Staines. The closure came despite the fact that the UKP25m a year unit launched a new drive at Comdex last month (CI No 1,058). The surviving side of the business is running at a profit of UKP2.5m, also on turnover of about UKP25m.