Seagate Technology recently announced a plan to expand its recording media manufacturing capabilities by setting up its third media plant in Singapore. The new plant will be built close to the company’s existing facilities at Woodlands, and the combined operations will supply about 80 percent of Seagate’s total requirement of recording media, a critical component used in the assembly of its disc drives.

The project includes construction, building and equipment spread over the next four years, and will potentially create 3,000 new jobs when the plant is fully operational and running at maximum production capacity. Manufacturing activities are expected to start by mid-2008.

“Singapore has been a key strategic site for Seagate and today’s announcement essentially establishes the country as Seagate’s central media manufacturing hub,” said Bill Watkins, Seagate chief executive officer. “We will continue to make strategic investments in Singapore by leveraging established infrastructure and tapping the exceptional pool of technological and human resources this island-nation has to offer. We are also pleased to extend our mutually beneficial partnership with the Singapore government, which has shown tremendous support during the time that we have operated here.”

“We are glad that Singapore remains a key location in the global strategy of the world's largest disc drives manufacturer,” said Teo Ming Kian, Chairman of the Singapore Economic Development Board. “In 2005, Singapore already accounted for 25 percent of the world market share for disc media. With Seagate's new investment into their third media plant, Singapore's lead as a key manufacturing location for hard disc media globally will widen and its ecosystem for hard disk drives strengthened considerably.”

Locating the expanded operations close to its existing Woodlands facilities allows the company to leverage technical expertise and resources, and efficiently feed its regional disc drive assembly operations.

“Seagate’s vertical integration strategy of owning our component manufacturing capabilities has established us as the industry leader, shipping 119 million disc drives in our past fiscal year,” said Jerry Glembocki, senior vice president of Seagate’s global recording heads and media operations. “The new facilities will make Seagate in Singapore the world’s single largest producer of recording media.”

The Woodlands extension will see the construction of a new three-story manufacturing block with a built-up area of about 54,000 square meters, housing Seagate’s state-of-the-art equipment and new-generation technologies, including perpendicular recording capabilities.

Initially, the new facility is expected to require an increase in staffing of nearly 1,000 employees. The headcount could potentially grow to 3,000 when the plant is operating at maximum production capacity depending on the global requirement for recording media.

Piling works will start later this year and manufacturing activities on the first production floor are expected to begin in the first half of calendar year 2008.

The Woodlands operation, established in 1996, was Seagate’s first Recording Media Operations (RMO) facility outside of North America. It is also the company’s largest media manufacturing facility and currently accounts for about 60 percent of Seagate’s internal output of the industry’s most advanced disc media. Seagate’s other RMO operations are located in Milpitas (USA) and Northern Ireland.

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