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[Thomas W. Bethel]

From Glenn Meadows mastering board...

Japan-based Taiyo Yuden announced last week that it would be downsizing its optical disc production capacity by roughly 40%, as it seeks to restore profitability to the recordable media business it pioneered more than two decades ago.

Taiyo Yuden plans to streamline its production of optical media products to 65 million units per month, down from its current level of 110 million units per month. The company also says it will cut staffing its optical media business by 45%, and reduce its inventory levels by 40% by the end of its fiscal year (March 31, 2011).

The measures will put optical media products unit, which includes recordable CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs, on track to return to profitability by in the next fiscal year, Taiyo Yuden says.

Taiyo Yuden was a key technology contributor to the CD-R format in 1988, when Sony and Philips first published a specification for the format. Today it stands as one of the last remaining optical disc manufacturers in Japan.

More at China Economic News Service, which speculates that Taiyo Yuden’s restructuring could be an outsourcing boon for Taiwan-based optical media producers such as Ritek and CMC Magnetics.

Additional information

According to Microboards, the distributor, They are only doing away with their OEM production since it was a money looser.
Their regular production now will be labeled under the JVC media brand which they recently purchased.
Availability, I was told, will not be a problem.

FWIW

[urm eric]

Thomas W. Bethel wrote on Mon, 04 October 2010 16:09

From Glenn Meadows mastering board... Japan-based Taiyo Yuden announced last week that it would be downsizing its optical disc production capacity by roughly 40%, as it seeks to restore profitability to the recordable media business it pioneered more than two decades ago. Taiyo Yuden plans to streamline its production of optical media products to 65 million units per month, down from its current level of 110 million units per month. The company also says it will cut staffing its optical media business by 45%, and reduce its inventory levels by 40% by the end of its fiscal year (March 31, 2011). The measures will put optical media products unit, which includes recordable CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs, on track to return to profitability by in the next fiscal year, Taiyo Yuden says. Taiyo Yuden was a key technology contributor to the CD-R format in 1988, when Sony and Philips first published a specification for the format. Today it stands as one of the last remaining optical disc manufacturers in Japan. More at China Economic News Service, which speculates that Taiyo Yuden’s restructuring could be an outsourcing boon for Taiwan-based optical media producers such as Ritek and CMC Magnetics.

I was delighted to find a Taiyo distributor in the UK a couple of years ago, and immediately bought a few hundred top-dog blanks. But so few of my sessions are now delivered to the clients, or distributed by them, on physical media I still have over half of them left.


Eric

[jackthebear]

urm eric wrote on Tue, 05 October 2010 08:31

I was delighted to find a Taiyo distributor in the UK a couple of years ago, and immediately bought a few hundred top-dog blanks. But so few of my sessions are now delivered to the clients, or distributed by them, on physical media I still have over half of them left. Eric

An increasing trend it seems......

[Macc]

Is it such a surprise?

I burn an average of 3 CDs a year.

BFD

[hnewman]

Macc wrote on Tue, 05 October 2010 19:02

Is it such a surprise? I burn an average of 3 CDs a year. BFD

Wow, what am I doing wrong?  I make 10 a week easily.  So many duplicators still don't want DDP's it seems, are you all just insisting?  

[jdg]

you gotta pay that CDR tax up there in canadia, all your clients are fronts for your government tax collections.

and now we're side-topic'd..
i've been thru about 250ish CDRs this year.

[Waltz Mastering]

I still go through a fair amount of cdr's. 2 refs a safety and master with every project that requires a master for replication.
Maybe average one ddp a month if that.

[lowland]

I have been burning several hundred CDRs a year for refs. and masters, although that's currently dropping off as more approvals are done over the internet and DDPs, either uploaded to a factory server or supplied on DVD-R, are on the rise. One customer recently abandoned CDs for distribution in favour of downloads, and I expect we'll see more of that over time.

[Darius van H]

Prolly 50/50 DDPs and CD masters over here.

I still go through an awful lot of CDRs though.

DDP is definitely on the increase, which is of course a good thing!

[Peter Beckmann]

I'm still burning plenty of CDs.
Yes, I'm delivering more DDPs electronically, but still a fair few on optical media. [usually DVD with a nice big warning printed on it that I want the DDP folder contents replicated as audio CD just in case...]

However, I do all my QC listening from CDs burned from the master DDP, so I get through plenty like that alone. That seems wasteful, esp as they then probably end up in landfill. Is anyone using rewritable disks for this? that would seem a good thing to do if possible.

Peter

[Jerry Tubb]

We're also burning tons of CDs, from our perspectives clients still want hard copies not just waves or mp3s.

Sounds like TY is setting us up for a price increase, all concerned about profits and such nonsense.

JT

p.s. as long as the quality stays up there, I'm buying TY.

[Thomas W. Bethel]

Jerry Tubb wrote on Wed, 06 October 2010 11:12

We're also burning tons of CDs, from our perspectives clients still want hard copies not just waves or mp3s. Sounds like TY is setting us up for a price increase, all concerned about profits and such nonsense. JT p.s. as long as the quality stays up there, I'm buying TY.

Only now they are being sold as JVCs.

[Jerry Tubb]

Thomas W. Bethel wrote on Wed, 06 October 2010 11:51

Jerry Tubb wrote on Wed, 06 October 2010 11:12 We're also burning tons of CDs, from our perspectives clients still want hard copies not just waves or mp3s. Sounds like TY is setting us up for a price increase, all concerned about profits and such nonsense. JT p.s. as long as the quality stays up there, I'm buying TY. Only now they are being sold as JVCs.

Oh yes of course, we've used a few spindles of the JVC/TY white inkjet type, they were fine.

Be interesting to watch over the next few months.

JT

[dcollins]

Jerry Tubb wrote on Wed, 06 October 2010 08:12

Sounds like TY is setting us up for a price increase, all concerned about profits and such nonsense. JT p.s. as long as the quality stays up there, I'm buying TY.

Considering they are like 30 cents each now, the price would have to increase a lot before they would be considered non-disposable!


DC

[David Glasser]

dcollins wrote on Wed, 06 October 2010 12:43

Considering they are like 30 cents each now, the price would have to increase a lot before they would be considered non-disposable! DC

Raise your hand if you remember when they were $45 each.