Seagate cuts 70 jobs at plant in Longmont

LONGMONT — Seagate Technology (Nasdaq: STX) has laid off 70 workers at its plant in Longmont as it continues to reduce its workforce worldwide by 17 percent adjusting to a lesser demand for its disk drives.

Most of the people who lost jobs were engineers in the company’s research and development group, said Cindy Martini, Seagate’s senior communications manager.

Martini said 1,530 workers remain at Seagate in Longmont, but more jobs are expected to be cut through the end of the company’s fiscal year 2017 that ends July 30 and into early fiscal year 2018.

SPONSORED CONTENT

How Platte River Power Authority is accelerating its energy transition

Platte River Power Authority, the community-owned wholesale electricity provider for Northern Colorado, has a history of bold initiatives.

The layoffs are part of a global restructuring plan announced in July.

“Our industry has become much more competitive over the past few years,” Martini said in an email. “This has been driven in part by technology advancements that have led to major changes in the kinds of products our customers need.”

Martini said that while there continues to be significant opportunities for hard disk drives in specific markets, including enterprise, surveillance, gaming and consumer, where capacity demand continues to grow, “we’ve seen a significant decline in demand in other markets we’ve traditionally served, such as notebook, desktop and mission critical.”