INDUSTRY

OAKDALE, MN -- Imation Corp. (NYSE:IMN), a worldwide leader in data storage and information management, today announced it will invest up to $49 million over two years to develop advanced media coating capabilities at its Weatherford, Okla. plant. The expansion is expected to allow Imation to advance its metal particulate (MP) manufacturing competencies across multiple formats for next generation data storage tape products. The 40,000 square-foot facility is expected to be operational in the first half of 2004, with less than five percent of the expenditure occurring in the current fiscal year. The investment is not anticipated to change Imation's outlook for capital spending in 2002, which stands at $50 million. While the initial products will approach 400 gigabytes (GB) per cartridge, ultimately the new coating capability is expected to enable the company to develop tape cartridges with capacities reaching 1 terabyte (TB) and beyond within the next decade. (One TB is the equivalent of 1 million megabytes (MB) of data.) "As part of Imation's commitment to providing best-in-class removable media products to our customers and partners, this investment in advanced media manufacturing capabilities extends our current technology capabilities to meet the challenging demands of future data storage tape media formats," said Bill Monahan, chairman and CEO of Imation Corp. "Our heritage in tape technology spans 50 years - since the birth of the magnetic data storage industry in 1952. While we celebrate that half-century of tape storage leadership, we continue to build upon our legacy as we push the limits of what tape can do to meet customer needs." Imation's Weatherford plant is an ISO 9002-certified magnetic media coating facility; it currently employs approximately 50 people. "The increased densities, thinner tape substrates, tighter head-tape interface tolerances and higher tape speeds that are required for future tape storage products demand new, more advanced manufacturing capabilities," said Colleen Willhite, vice president of Imation Corp., manufacturing and supply chain. "Each of our manufacturing plants has a role to play as a center of excellence. With the establishment of a world-class coating facility at Weatherford, their role in the development of future tape formats is critical. The engineering and manufacturing team all around the company remains dedicated to excellence in manufacturing and to the delivery of leading-edge products to customers around the world." The company did not discuss projected employment impact at the highly automated manufacturing site. Metal particulate is the coating technology behind the most widely used and rapidly growing data storage tape formats today. Future generations of MP media will provide storage capacities of 1 TB per cartridge and beyond needed to meet the demanding requirements of large scale data storage operations for backup and restore operations, nearline and offline storage, disaster recovery, business continuity planning and data archiving and retrieval. At its research facilities located in Oakdale, Minn., Imation continues to advance the development of MP media capacity, read/write speeds, and pilot production designs that are implemented throughout the company's manufacturing sites.