Showa Denko Finishes HD Expansion to Monthly 13.75M units

Showa Denko announced on Monday the firm completed the expansion of hard disc at domestic and offshore 3 plants. The firm started the new capacity in April after the firm expanded the capacity by 3.05 million units to 13.75 million units per month to meet growing demand in developing countries and for new applications. The firm also added new lines to make products for the new perpendicular magnetic recording technology. The firm expands the capacity to 24 million units per month by the end of 2008.The firm is world largest hard disc maker with more than 20% of market share in outside shipment market. The firm makes hard disc at Showa Denko HD in Chiba, Showa Denko HD Singapore and Showa Denko HD Trace in Taiwan. World hard disc market is expected to grow to around 800 million units in 2008 from around 600 million units in 2005. The demand keeps growing when personal computers has more memory capacity and hard disc applications are expanding for digital appliances including portable music player, digital versatile disc player with hard disc drive and car navigation system. Showa Denko is building no.4 plant at Singapore completing the working in second half of 2006. The firm starts the new line in November and expands the output capacity. The started new lines can make hard disc for the new perpendicular magnetic recording technology. The new technology records data on disc vertically to increase the recording capacity while traditional in-plane recording system records data on disc horizontally. The firm succeeded the new recording in June 2005 for the first time in the world.