Seagate announces a further 1,100 job cuts

Drive maker Seagate is to shed staff again

Storage hardware vendor Seagate has announced plans to shed a further 1,100 employees.

The move is part of an ongoing effort to cut costs by roughly $300m (£198m). The cuts will save the company $125m (£82m) in annual salaries, but will cost $72m (£47m) to implement.

The laid off workers account for 2.5 per cent of the company's workforce, and Seagate said that it hopes to complete the process by the end of July. The bulk of the cuts will be in the US, but Seagate's global operations are also at risk.

Seagate has shed nearly a quarter of its workforce in the past year. The company has also made salary reductions, and closed its research centre in Pittsburgh.

Seagate hopes that the cuts will help the company to regain profitability by the end of its 2010 fiscal year.

The news comes just one week after Microsoft cut several thousand employees fresh on the heels of cuts at Yahoo.

Some companies have expressed hopes that the industry is beginning to recover, but many are still being forced to shed jobs and cut costs.