History 2002: Showa Denko to Buy Disk Media Business of Competitor MCC

Showa Denko KK or SDK has reached an agreement to acquire the magnetic HDD media business of Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation or MCC along with its 350 employees in Singapore, for an undisclosed price.

The combined production will reach 5.3 million pieces a month, consisting of 3.2 million by Showa in Ichihara City and Oyama, Japan, as well as in Malaysia, and 2.1 million by MCC in Singapore.

If we accept Peripheral Research’s figures, which estimated the WW market of rigid magnetic disks in 2001 at 364 million units, the new entity represents roughly 17% of WW production.

Showa thus can expect to achieve overall sales of $367 million in 2003, $98 million of which can be attributed to its new acquisition.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 178 on November 2002 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.