Konica Minolta Enhances its Production Capacity of HDD Glass Substrates

Tokyo (March 11, 2010) -- Konica Minolta Opto, Inc. today announced that it has decided to enhance the production capacity of glass substrates of hard disk drives (HDDs) by adding production line in response to a rapid growth in demand and the accelerated increase in storage density.

Konica Minolta's glass substrates for HDDs are produced by its production subsidiaries, Konica Minolta Glass Tech (M) Sdn. Bhd. (OGM) in Malacca, Malaysia and Konica Minolta Glass Tech Co., Ltd. (OGT) in Osaka, Japan. The scheduled enhancement of production capacity will be focused on OGM and will increase 180% from the current level.

Against the backdrop of the explosive increase in digital contents in developing countries, a drastic growth of the HDD market is anticipated. A storage device for PCs and portable music players, a HDD has a built-in magnetic disk, which is formed on a disk-shaped substrate. While there are two types of substrate: aluminum and glass, glass substrate has higher heat-resistance and shock-resistance and is more suitable for high-density storage media than aluminum substrate. For these reasons, glass substrate is rapidly gaining popularity, being employed in notebook computers and various digital home appliances.

Based on the expertise of R&D and production of glass lenses, Konica Minolta built a glass substrate development and production system covering the entire process starting from materials development to melting, pressing and polishing, and has produced glass substrates for magnetic disks since the 1990s in Japan. In FY2007, Konica Minolta opened OGM in Malaysia to meet the growing demand. However, the demand for higher-density, higher-quality glass substrates soon outpaced the production capacity of Konica Minolta. It is under these circumstances that Konica Minolta has determined to add the new production line in the OGM plant upon introduction of improved technologies.
Through this enhancement, Konica Minolta will be able to produce approximately 16 million glass substrates a month against the current production capacity of approximately 9 million and a further increase in capacity is also planned in the future.

Seeing a great business chance in today's market trend, Konica Minolta will remain committed to satisfying ever-diversifying customer needs in the growing HDD market by aggressive investments and consecutive technological development efforts, thereby making its presence an essential part of the market.