History 2000: Hewlett-Packard to Cease Tape Drive Manufacturing in Bristol, UK

Hewlett-Packard has decided to cease tape drive manufacturing in Bristol, UK, and just laid off about 100 workers there.

This would seem to confirm HP’s new strategy to subcontract all storage devices. Only last month, the company sold off its library business to the Dii Group and most recently decided to close its 640 employee plant in Greelay, CO.

The Bristol plant assembled DDS DAT drives.

Of course, this does not mean that the society is abandoning tape technology entirely. The first gen of Ultrium products will be manufactured in the UK but most likely outsourced after that, and Bristol is currently working actively on 4mm DDS-5 technology.

Contrary to what we wrote in our last issue, HP has not manufactured Travan tape drives in Loveland, CO for some time now, subcontracting them instead to Solectron.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 144 on January 2000 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.