Mitsubishi Chemical Infonics Pte. Ltd. (MCI) announced that it has installed its own designed state-of-the-art BD-R manufacturing lines (BD-R DL 50 GB and BD-R LtH 25GB).

According to the statement, MCI manufactures DVD-R DL and BD-R LtH discs, which are available under the Mitsubishi Kagaku Media (MKM) and Verbatim brands. MCI and MKM/Verbatim are wholly owned subsidiaries of one of Japan’s largest chemical companies, Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation (MCC).

With increasing demand for Blu-ray Disc (BD), MCI and MKM decided to invest in their Optical Disc Division operation in Singapore and will continue to aggressively invest over the next two years as the BD market grows.

“MCI invests in new equipments by approximately 40% of the total sales of MCI’s optical disc division,” said Yoshinobu Ikeda, president of MCI . “With this expansion, the Singapore plant will increase its manpower by 20%.”

The statement goes on to say that MCI is of strategic importance to MKM/Verbatim’s BD business. Disc technology is developed in Japan then transferred to Singapore for further development, trials and mass production (technology, processes, quality control, etc.).

“Singapore has a pool of talented engineers and technicians, strong government support, quick and ease of doing business, all these factors contributed to make our Singapore plant an ideal choice for mass production technology development centre. The Singapore facility has produced a number of world first products,” said Mr. Shigenori Ootsuka, president of MKM. “The global Blu-ray Disc storage media market is poised to grow exponentially with the emergence of Blu-ray Disc as the de facto technology format for High-Definition.”

MCI will produce both BD-R LtH 25GB (single-layer) and BD-R DL 50GB (dual-layer) discs. BD-R LtH (Low-to-High) uses organic dye developed by MKM as the recording layer, while BD-R DL utilizes inorganic recording layers.

For more information visit: www.m-kagaku.co.jp ; www.mcmedia.co.jp