SINGAPORE — The Government is committed to working with key partners such as Seagate to make sure Singapore continues to be a leading location for the design and manufacture of critical components to support the needs of the digital world.

Minister for Trade and Industry Lim Hng Kiang made this remark yesterday at the opening of the United States-based disk drive maker’s new S$100 million research and development centre, as he emphasised the role of the electronics cluster as a strong pillar of Singapore’s economy.

“To date, Singapore is a key contributor to the data storage industry, with close to 50 per cent of the world’s manufacturing capacity for hard-disk media … In 2014, electronics manufacturing accounted for about 5 per cent of Singapore’s gross domestic product,” he said.

Seagate’s new facility in Ayer Rajah Crescent, spanning a gross floor area of 40,000sqm in two tower blocks, will focus on the development of 2.5-inch hard drives, hybrid drives, firmware, software and other technologies

Named The Shugart after the company’s late founder Alan Shugart, the facility will house all of Seagate’s 500 R&D personnel here, fostering greater collaboration and innovation. Including the research personnel, the centre will house 900 of the company’s 7,000 employees in Singapore.

Seagate, the first investor to set up a disk drive component sub-assembly plant in Singapore in 1982, has two other buildings here — one in Ang Mo Kio and another in Woodlands.

Singapore remains the company’s first and only media manufacturing location outside of the US.

Mr Lim said the Government will continue to ensure Singapore’s competitiveness and strength in the electronics industry.

The Government will support companies to invest in new automation and robotics technologies and to augment their manufacturing activities with process R&D. Doing so would enable Singapore to win in niche areas, such as specialty integrated circuits and hard-disk media, Mr Lim said.

DBS economist Irvin Seah said: “The electronics sector for Singapore has been through several structural changes over the past few years. Regional players are catching up on sophisticated technology, and the only way to stay ahead of the race is to continue to branch out and command a strong competitive advantage by continuing to invest in R&D.”

“This is especially so for specific high-technology products so that competitors will not find it easy to compete,” he added.

Seagate also announced yesterday a S$300,000 bursary programme with the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University to help groom the next generation of graduates to meet the industry’s needs.