The Inquirer: Moving backwards going forwards
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Seagate drops £60 million on Springtown upgrade
STORAGE FIRM Seagate has announced that it is spending £60 million on upgrading its Springtown plant in Londonderry, Northern Ireland in a bid to bolster its research and development efforts.
The package of investments is made up of £47.3 million from Seagate itself and £12.7 million from a grant supplied by Invest Northern Ireland (INI).
As well as "substantially enhancing the importance and technical relevance of the Springtown operation", the cash injection will create 85 R&D related jobs.
"Technical innovation is the cornerstone of our success and the decision to locate this important strategic R&D investment in Northern Ireland is a measure of our confidence not only in the Springtown operation, but also in the wealth of intellectual talent available here," said Steve Luczo, Seagate CEO.
Luczo didn't elaborate on how much the substantial input from INI played in the decision, but did say that its financial support was "of pivotal importance in securing this venture for Northern Ireland."
Brian Burns, who'll be helping run the show at the Springtown plant, reckons that the operation is "already recognised as one of the United Kingdom's most advanced nanotechnology scale manufacturing facilities and this latest investment will serve to cement and enhance that reputation."
Some of the money will also be put towards establishing a new research facility in the Physics Department of Queen's University Belfast along with 10 related research posts to be created as part of a collaboration with the institution. µ
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I'm impressed not by seagate's R&D infusion. Owning one of their 500gb drives that transformed itself into a brick, a week after puchase. They wanna invest more in having better stringent firmware tests before releasing such rubbish drives out into the world.SEAGATES suck and so does MAXTOR'S after they bought the company.
How about Seagate makes it so that their drives don't just randomly die on you all the time? The 7200.11's AND 7200.12's have been plagued with problems... FIX IT, SEAGATE.
Maybe they can figure out, why they made such sorry ass drives over the last year. (1TB 1.5TB)
Never will buy from them ever again.
I was a big fan of SEAGATE.
That is WAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OK, so you couldn't wait to press that little CAPS LOCK key, could you?
Try this: the Caps Lock key is usually located at the left of a keyboard; please try it sometime. It will help with the 12 year old syndrome and aside from that, it's a genuine pleasure sometimes just to try out Title Case?
Lot of hope,
Dave xxx
THEN I THOUGHT, THATS EXACTLY THE COMMENT THE INQ EDITOR WANTS TO MANIPULATE ME TO MAKE.
THATS WHY I DIDNT SAY ANYTHING AT ALL.
Lets suppose the median wage is approximately GBP 15,000 per year. Then 85 jobs cost approximately GBP 1.27 million per year.
So for 12.7 million, you could "create 85 jobs" by simply paying 85 people the median wage just to sit around and do nothing - for 10 years.
I hope INI were not simply buying jobs for a deprived area with this "investment", because in light of this, 85 jobs for GBP 12.7 million does not sound like particularly excellent value for money.