History (1995): French MPO to Manufacture Sony Mini-Discs

MPO or Les Moulages Plastiques de l’Ouest (Villaine-la-Juhel, France), a major audio CD, CD-ROM and LaserDisc stamper, has decided to begin producing Mini-Disc under a license from Sony.

Investments for this operation are as high as FF40 million. Production capacity is 3,500 recordable Mini-Discs and 10,000 prerecorded disks per day.

There are also plans to produce MD-Data disks using a special proprietary technology developed with LETI laboratories in Grenoble, France.

MPO employs about 1,000 people on 3 continents. This company, owned by the De Poix family, recorded annual sales of more than FF800 million and produces some 160 million CDs per year.

MPO has factories in France, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Miami, FL and Madrid, Spain.

The French company plans to build a new plant in Thailand as part of a joint-venture with a local industry company.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue 86, published on March 1995.