LAST OF QUANTUM WORKERS DONATE £6,000 TO HOSPICE

AT ITS PEAK THE COMPANY, WHICH WAS SUBSIDIARY OF US BASED CORPORATION, EMPLOYED 550 July 2006

THE once buzzing canteen in Quantum was almost deserted on a July morning in 2006 as the last of the remaining staff gathered for a noble gesture, the presentation of a cheque for €6,000 to the North Louth Hospice.

The money represented the proceeds of a sale conducted by the 125 workers who were the last to leave the American owned firm.

The closure of the plant on Dundalk’s Finnabair Estate had been announced the previous August, when 250 were employed.

At its peak, Quantum Peripheral Products, a subsidiary of the US based Quantum Corporation, employed 550. The firm established in Dundalk in May, 1992 in a €26.6m. partnership venture with MKIR (then IKEI) Panasonic and Quantum Corporation.

Operating in the notoriously fickle I.T. market, the firm provided data protection and network storage and met with great success in switching over from hard disc drive production to DLT tape.

Heavily supported by the IDA to the tune of €5.4m. between 1991 and 2002,the firm initially realised its potential and steadily build up theworkforce to its peak of 550.

However, since the data storage business became extremely vulnerable to low price economies the higher production costs in their Dundalk plant made the firm less competitive and the transfer of their European repair operations to Hungary was the final nail in the coffin for the Dundalk plant.

There were many tears shed among the remaining employees as they gathered in July, 2006 for the presentation of the cheque to the Hospice for many said that it was a good place to work.

The closure coming on the back of the closure of Littelfuse (formerly ECCO) was seen as a grim day for manufacturing in the town.