It's springtime for Springtown as Seagate rains nearly £50m on Northern Ireland plant

Seagate is to help pump £57.4m ($74m) into its plant at Springtown in Derry, Northern Ireland, to get its next-gen disk heads dealing with smaller bits. The plant manufactures 200mm thin-film wafers from which the recording heads are made. The cash – £47.4m ($61m) from Seagate and £9.95m ($12.8m) from Invest Northern Ireland …

[Semtex451]

See, Brexit - Pah

(Have to get the trolling in early, the pub is calling me)

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not entirely unlikely that Northern Ireland will join the Republic of Ireland (and hence remain in the EU) if Brex-shit actually happens, you realise?

(Also, NI substantially voted to Remain.)

[Anonymous Coward]

@Also, NI substantially voted to Remain

and yet their politicians are fighting to leave hard, almost as though they have their own agenda.

NI before brexit was a cheap place for foreign companies to have a foot hold in Europe and the UK, after brexit my guess is that the same companies will just move their base and expertese to somewhere that still is a benefit to them, leaving NI with what exactly?

[Petergwilson]

Totally unlikely if you had any idea what you were talking about. Or maybe you didn't realise what 30 years of troubles were about.

[Paul Crawford]

Good to see a success story about NI for a change.

[Pascal Monett]

One thing is for sure

Storage technology is not getting simpler.

Soon, you'll have to be a full-blown boffin just to take a course in designing new storage solutions.

[Semtex451]

Re: One thing is for sure

Hate to break it to you Pascal but you are a very full blown boffin already

[TRT]

Surface plasmon polaritons?

I thought that sounded like something they made up for ST:TNG, along with Tetrion emissions.

[Timbo]

How big are they?

"The plant manufactures 200mm thin-film wafers from which the recording heads are made."

200 mm ?? So about 8 inches? Those are mighty big recording heads - how big are the platters ??

[sbt]

Re: How big are they?

Not a typo. The wafers are that big. Many thousands of heads will be fabbed on each wafer before being split off for attachment to the read arms in the drives.

[amanfromMars 1]

Another WTF Why in God's name in Derry/Londonderry Moment?

What's the name of the game, El Reg? Déjà vu?

It's springtime for Springtown as Seagate rains nearly £50m on Northern Ireland plant Developing nanophotonic disk read-write heads ... By Chris Mellor 26 Apr 2019 at 14:03?

..... or ......

Seagate pumps £60m into Springtown plant Next-gen read/write heads by Chris Mellor Jan 2010 at 11:42?

Both current and next-gen read/write heads would like to know.

[Doctor Syntax]

It sounds like better value for money than the NI government poured into DeLorean or the hifi company whose name escapes me for the moment.

[Doctor Syntax]

the hifi company whose name escapes me for the moment. Strathearn. Suspected as having a leakage problem, losing CMOS parts that were used in IEDs.

[Paul Crawford]

https://zstereo.co.uk/2013/11/07/strathearn-sma2/