Sony will close South Jersey CD plant

[onehandle]

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer

Hurt by the shift to digital-music downloads and by a soft economy, Sony Corp. of America will close a high-volume CD-manufacturing plant in South Jersey that has operated for 50 years, first producing vinyl music albums for Columbia Records.

About 300 workers at the Sony DADC plant in Pitman will lose their jobs when it ceases manufacturing operations in late March, company spokeswoman Lisa Gephardt said Tuesday. A year ago, Sony stopped manufacturing DVDs at the plant, eliminating about 160 jobs.

Sony is consolidating the production of music CDs and video DVDs in a plant in Terre Haute, Ind. The Pitman plant presses CDs for multiple artists.

"In light of the current economic environment and challenges facing the physical-media industry, Sony DADC is taking additional steps to reduce cost from our supply chain network in order to remain competitive," the company said in a statement.

Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20110112_Sony_will_close_South_Jersey_CD_plant.html

[villager]

1. Replacing it with an "MP3 plant?"

;-)

[KoKo]

4. "I Tunes" is the ONE! (amazingly sad...but I guess tech stuff moves on)

:-(

[ElsewheresDaughter]

2. Terre Haute, Ind....moving its operations to The Prison Industry?...insourcing maybe?

[somone]

3. I think it's this facility:

http://www.sonydadc.com/opencms/opencms/sites/am/About_Us/Americas_Facilities/Terre_Haute_IN.html



The first manufacturer of Compact Discs in the United States, Sony DADC Terre Haute opened in 1983. The $21 million facility began production with a capacity of 300,000 discs per month and a full time staff of 100 employees. After more than twenty years, Sony DADC's 678,000 square foot plant in Terre Haute remains at the cutting edge of technology as Sony DADC's Research & Development facility and the largest US disc production plant at over 60 million discs - now CD, DVD, Blu-ray Disc and UMD - a month.

[CBHagman]

5. Sorry to hear this.

Truly the end of an era.

[alp227]

6. sad to see a sign of more job loss, but popular music has degraded in this age

Digital music is more environmentally friendly because that doesn't need all the packaging from physical albums

[boppers]

7. It's a buggy whip now.

A couple of years ago, I took a teenager to a music store. She didn't understand the entire *concept* of paying money for some plastic, when you couldn't even listen to the plastic without buying *more* stuff.