THE Co Derry town of Limavady will benefit by 760 jobs when the US computer components giant, Seagate Technology, gets into full production in two years time.

The company and the Northern Ireland Industrial Development Board (IDB) announced the opening of a new factory in the northwestern town yesterday. The town has been badly hit by unemployment and by a decline in agriculture due to the BSE crisis.

Seagate will take over the plant previously occupied by the compact disc cover manufacturer, Benelux, which closed last week after just a year in operation, at an estimated cost to the Industrial Development Board of £7.2 million.

Seagate Technology already has a factory in Springtown, Co Derry, which makes film heads for disc drives and employs 769 people. This is expected to rise to 1,150 by Christmas 1998. The new project will cost £68.2 million, £24.2 million of which has been provided by the IDB.

The 174,000 sq ft factory will produce nickel plated aluminium disc substrates for hard disc drives. These are the core material for the disc media on which computer hard drives read, write and store digital information. It will be capable of producing 56 million disc substrates a year.

The finished substrate will be shipped from Limavady to the compuny's plant in Singapore where they will be finished.

The decision to invest in the new plant was influenced by the experiences of the Springtown plant, according to Mr Bill Selvig, vice president of the substrate operations division of Seagate.

Northern Ireland Economy Minister, Baroness Denton, said. "This is the greatest compliment that could be paid to the Northern Ireland workforce."

Mr Bruce Robinson, chief executive of the IDB said. "It is a welcome demonstration of the suitability of Northern Ireland for high tech projects and I know it will assist us greatly in our efforts to attract other companies from this sector.