Plant ramps up hard disk media production

SDK has expanded the hard disk media production capacity at its subsidiary Showa Denko HD Singapore by one million disks a month to meet growing demand.

SDK has expanded the hard disk media production capacity at its subsidiary Showa Denko HD Singapore (SHDS) by one million disks a month to meet growing demand for hard disks for use in PCs, car navigation systems and MP3 players.

Expansion work on the five new lines was carried out between February and October.

The lines are now in full operation as SHDS has obtained approvals from relevant hard disk drive manufacturers.

SHDS's capacity has now increased to 3.1 million disks a month, involving aluminium- and glass-substrate hard disks with diameters of 2.5, 3.0 and 3.5in.

Except for hard disk drive manufacturers' internal production, SDK is the sole company in the world that produces both aluminium-substrate hard disks for desktop PCs as well as glass-substrate hard disks for notebook-size PCs and car navigation systems.

SDK is producing hard disks in Ichihara, Japan, as well.

After the expansion in Singapore, SDK's total hard disk media production capacity has reached 6.3 million disks a month (3.2 million in Ichihara and 3.1 million in Singapore).

Furthermore, SDK has reached an agreement with Trace Storage Technology Corp of Taiwan under which SDK will license its 80Gbyte hard disk manufacturing technology to Trace in early 2004 and purchase the product from Trace on a preferential basis.

When Trace's current capacity of 2 million disks a month is included, SDK will be able to supply a maximum of 8.3 million disks a month, or approximately 100 million disks a year.

SDK produces aluminium substrates for hard disks in Malaysia and Oyama, Japan.

SDK aims to continue supplying customers with the best-quality hard disks and fulfil customers' sophisticated requirements by fully using its inorganic/organic chemical technology and aluminium fabrication technology.

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