Terre Haute Sony DADC Plant Tries to Reinvent Itself
Source: PHOTO: Ingram Publishing/Thinkstock
TERRE HAUTE, Ind.–The Sony Digital Audio Disc Corporation plant in Terre Haute is reinventing itself.
It produced the first compact disc in North America. More than 23 billion CDs were made there since 1983. It was the largest employer in Terre Haute with about 2,000 workers.
As you can probably imagine, with CD’s becoming less utilized, executives have had to layoff thousands of workers.
They’ve got more than a million square feet of space, so they are now looking at medical device and semiconductor development as a way to diversify their distribution and hire more people.
“I think the message to the community is, ‘Yeah, we’ve had some rough years. We’re still here,” Sony DADC Senior Vice President Chad Bolin said in an interview with Inside Indiana Business Health Reporter Kylie Veleta. “And now we’re only going to continue to grow.”
Bolin says a big piece of the Sony facility that once made discs is 110,000 square feet is a room that used to make discs. Now they are using it for medical device makers and they have a tenet in the semiconductor industry.
“We know our country is aging in population and we see the Indiana growth in medical device fields,” said the plant’s development manager Heather Strohm. She said the facility has been a great place to reinvent themselves while also using local workers.
In addition to these new developments, the plant still produces Playstation discs and consoles.
