Imation Announces World's first Terabyte-Class Magnetic Tape Manufacturing Facility

Imation unveils its new state-of-the-art advanced tape manufacturing facility at its Weatherford plant, Oklahoma.  The world's first terabyte-class tape facility has been built specifically for the development of next-generation tape products.  Measuring an impressive 40,000 square-foot, the facility will include Imation's new Tera ngstrom technology, an advanced formulation and process, that allows Imation to achieve the smoothness and consistency required to develop future tape technologies with terabyte capacities.  One terabyte is the equivalent of one million megabytes of data, or 16 days of continuously running DVD movies.

"This world class facility is an important milestone for Imation, as we continue to expand our manufacturing capabilities," said Frank Russomanno, executive vice president and chief operating officer, Imation Corp.  "Imation has invested more than $100 million in research and development and capital in its data storage removable media business in 2003 alone."

 "Imation's investment in Weatherford is a great example of its commitment to quality and excellence in manufacturing.  With this new facility, Imation has significantly increased its manufacturing capabilities required for the development of future tape storage products, such as increased areal densities, thinner substrates, tighter head-tape interface tolerances and higher tape speeds," said Colleen Willhite, vice president and general manager, Imation's Magnetic Products division.

Imation's new Weatherford facility will begin commercial production in Q2 of 2004.  Initial products will be 200GB plus, in capacity; Imation expects its new (ISO 9002-certified) coating facility to deliver multi-terabyte cartridges within the decade.

Imation's manufacturing and technology expertise stems from the company's state-of-the-art research and development facility at the worldwide headquarters in Oakdale, Minnesota.  The 423,000 square-foot technology development centre is the only R&D facility in the United States focused solely on removable magnetic and optical data storage media.  The company also operates six global technical centres, including two centres in the United States, and one in Canada, China, Europe and Japan.  The technical centres are designed to help customers better optimise their current storage investments and address important customer questions about technology, applications, media care and handling, and data protection.

Metal particulate is the technology found in some of the most widely used and rapidly growing data storage tape formats today.  Future generations of MP media will provide storage capacities of one terabyte or more per cartridge needed to meet the demanding requirements of large scale data storage operations for backup and restore applications, nearline and offline storage, disaster recovery, business continuity planning and data archiving and retrieval.