History (1996): Seagate to Invest £50 Million in Springtown Wafer Plant Near Londonderry, Northern Ireland

Seagate Technology will invest £50 million in its Springtown wafer plant near Londonderry, in Northern Ireland.

The site is anticipated to bring an additional 300 jobs to the area.

This project will bring the total investment in the facility to £175 million.

From the current level of 750 people, employment should increase to 850 by mid-96 and then 1,100 by December 1998.

“More than 1 in 10 of all recording heads in the world’s installed HDDs has been made from wafers manufactured in Springtown,” said Brendan Hegarty, executive VP of Seagate and COO of its recording heads group. “This investment will also see Springtown complete the technology transfer into MR heads.”

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue 100, published on May 1996.

Note: Seagate invested an additional £57.4 million in the plant in April 2019 for R&D in nanophotonics.