Cabot MMD Breaks Ground On 170,000-Square-Foot Slurry Manufacturing Plant in Aurora, Ill.

Business Editors

AURORA, Ill.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 23, 2000

Cabot Corporation's Microelectronics Materials Division (MMD), the leading global supplier of chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) polishing slurries, today announced it recently broke ground on a new 170,000-square-foot manufacturing facility to serve its customers in North America. The facility will produce the company's CMP slurries, used by semiconductor manufacturers to polish device wafers and by hard disk drive manufacturers to polish rigid disk substrates and magnetic heads. Under construction in Aurora's Meridian Business Campus, the plant is scheduled for completion in the third quarter of this year.

"Cabot MMD is a valued partner in the continued growth of Aurora--located in the heart of Illinois' 'Silicon Prairie'--and we look forward to supporting the company's future growth plans," said Aurora Mayor David Stover. "Cabot has demonstrated an impressive history of innovation and expansion, and we appreciate its contributions to the community in terms of employment and stability. We wish them much continued success."

"We have been building capacity ahead of industry demand," said Matthew Neville, Cabot MMD's vice president and general manager. "This now allows us to expand slurry production to meet our U.S. customers' growing needs for our products."

The new Aurora plant will include multiple production lines with the capability to expand up to 300 percent as demand warrants. It also will include a quality control and quality assurance lab to ensure consistent process execution from raw materials input through finished product output. Cabot MMD will use the facility, which will initially employ 50 people, as a key supply chain management asset for the raw materials and finished products used throughout its North American operations. Among the products slated for production at the new facility are the company's Semi-Sperse(TM) P1000, for polishing polysilicon used in the manufacture of 256 megabit and faster DRAMs; Semi-Sperse W2585, for polishing tungsten damascene devices with 0.18-micron and smaller geometries; and Lustra(TM) 2090 ultra slurry, for polishing disk drive media substrates designed for high storage capacity applications.

The new facility is the latest phase in the company's continuous efforts to expand global infrastructure and product offerings to provide total CMP polishing process solutions to its customers in the United States and around the world. In December 1999, Cabot MMD announced it would expand production capacity for CMP polishing slurries by 150 percent at its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Japan. Last September, the company completed its new headquarters, also in Aurora, which increased R&D capacity in North America by more than 60 percent. In May, a new CMP polishing slurry line was added to its Wales facility, increasing production capacity in Europe 100 percent.

Cabot Corporation's Microelectronics Materials Division, Aurora, Ill., is the leading global supplier of CMP slurries for polishing oxide and various metals used in semiconductor manufacturing processes. Cabot MMD is a division of Cabot Corp. Headquartered in Boston, Cabot is a global chemical manufacturing company that specializes in producing and handling of surface chemistry of fine particles for the automotive, industrial, construction, semiconductor, coatings and inkjet colorant markets. The company also operates a liquefied natural gas business. Cabot had revenues of $1.7 billion in 1999. Its common stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CBT.

The statements contained in this press release may contain "forward-looking statements." Actual results may differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by the risk factors and other cautionary statements included in Cabot Corporation's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Semi-Sperse and Lustra are trademarks of Cabot Corporation.