Closure of Seagate Plant Seen As a Huge Blow to 'Knowledge' Economy in Ulster

Oct 30, 05:20 AM

Current Headlines: By Nigel Tilson

Seagate, with its plants at Springtown in Londonderry and at Limavady, is the fourth largest manufacturing employer in Northern Ireland - it has a workforce of around 2,100 in the province - and spends almost pound(s)60m a year in the Ulster economy.

The Limavady plant, where 930 are employed, is a prime example of the type of hi-tech, or knowledge, activity that the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment is keen to nurture and develop.

The US-headquartered firm's Limavady facility makes nickel plated aluminium substrates which are the basis for the discs inside a hard drive on which digital information is recorded.

The substrates and read-write heads produced in Limavady are sent to other Seagate facilities in the US, China, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia for further processing and assembly into finished hard drives.

Last year the global hard disc drive industry was worth in excess of $$30bn, shipping more than 400 million hard drives. This is expected to rise to as much as $$45n by 2010.

Seagate Technology, the biggest hard drive manufacturer, has some 35% of the market.

Back in February the plant manager at Seagate Technology's Limavady facility, William O'Kane, said in The Belfast Telegraph that its two factories here were "at the very heart" of a global technological revolution.

The hard drive is a device that enables businesses, governments and individuals to store data on computer systems - and it is also driving today's digital lifestyle.

According to a DETI survey in 2005, the tradeable services sector, of which the knowledge economy is a key part, had the potential to generate up to 54,000 new jobs over the next 10 years in Northern Ireland.

In 2003 firms classified within the high potential group exported services valued at pound(s)126.4m. And the computer industry contributed the highest level of exports - 64%.

Invest NI has a unit which targets growth opportunities within the tradeable services sector, and even its trade mission programme has a special focus on the sector.

Seagate's action will undoubtedly be a blow to its strategy, but hopefully one which it will quickly recover from. The blow to Limavady will be much more devastating.

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