Seagate Technology Inc says that the plant it is to establish in Londonderry, Ulster (CI No 2,072) – at a cost of $65m – will bring wafer fabrication to the province, and will dramatically increase its capacity for producing thin-film recording heads. When completed by the end of 1993, the new plant will provide enough of the wafers from which hard disc drive recording heads are produced to make in excess of 100m thin-film heads per year. This production volume will double Seagate’s existing capacity.Anticipating that demand for its thin-film heads will increase to double that of recent levels by the second quarter of 1993, the company will use the Derry plant to complement existing wafer fabrication operations in Minnesota, with heads going into its own hard disks and also being offered on the OEM market, where Read-Rite Corp has been making all the running of late.The majority of wafers produced in Londonderry will be machined into recording heads at Seagate’s Penang, Malaysia manufacturing plant. The Ulster fab will be fitted with manufacturing equipment capable of producing both inductive and magnetoresistive head wafers, and wafers will also be made to produce the magnetoresistive tape heads used in the new Digital Compact Cassette systems. It will cover 100,000 square feet, of which about 30% will be dedicated to clean room operations. Seagate said it chose the location because of the overall positive economic sit uation in Northern Ireland, and the conviction that Londonderry will be an excellent environment in which to operate, with operating and invest ment costs lower than in other parts of the world – labour costs are fav ourable, and there is an infrastruc ture of experienced technical prof essionals. It will start with about 200 staff, going to 500 at capacity.
