The Furukawa Electric Participates in the Business of Glass Substrate for Hard Disc

The Furukawa Electric’s Electronics Company is currently shipping the samples of glass substrates for hard discs, and it aims at the product shipments for real by the end of fiscal 2006. Furukawa will manufacture and sell the aluminum blank products for glass substrates for HD. The firm will reinforce the substrate product business through its entering into glass substrate business which is mainly for mobile devices and digital home appliances. Furukawa performs the process of polishing glass plate that is cut into a circle. Furukawa will deal with the size of 0.85-2.5 inch in diameter. In particular, it is going to do with 0.85 and 1 inch in diameter. Furukawa has promoted development of its own unique production by application of fiber optics production technology, etc. since the firm launched the project team of the business of glass substrate for HD in March 2005. According to Furukawa, over 80% of aluminum blank materials are 3.5 inch in diameter, and they are used for desktop computer, server, and HD Digital Versatile Disc recorder, etc. Aluminum blank product suppliers in the world are Kobe Steel and Furukawa only. Furukawa’s Nikko Works in Tochigi Prefecture, Eastern Japan, has the production capacity of 30 million units per month. Meanwhile, glass substrate demand, its sharp increase is expected in the future following the trend of minimizing end products and needs of increase of memory capacity. The use of the product is for laptop, and HD cellular phone and portable music player.