Cabot MMD to Expand Manufacturing Capacity by 150 Percent.

GEINO, Japan--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 1, 1999--

Cabot Corporation's Microelectronics Materials Division (MMD), the leading global supplier of chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) slurries, today announced that it is expanding slurry manufacturing capacity by 150 percent at its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Japan.

To support this expansion, Cabot MMD will also increase its manufacturing workforce there by 200 percent to meet the increasing demand from its customers throughout the region. Construction will be completed in January 2000, just one year after the company opened the 4,000-square-meter facility in the Oaza-Kitakoyama Industrial Park.

"Cabot MMD is expanding its manufacturing facility and augmenting its workforce in direct response to increasing industry demand, enabling us to improve delivery times and enhance customer support throughout the region," commented Hiro Nishiya, Cabot MMD Japan business manager.

According to Nishiya, the Geino facility expansion is the latest move in the company's continuous efforts to expand global infrastructure and product offerings to provide total CMP polishing process solutions to its customers in Japan and around the world. In September, Cabot MMD completed its new headquarters in Aurora, Illinois, which increased R&D capacity in the United States by more than 60 percent. In May, the company added a new CMP polishing slurry line at its Wales facility, increasing production capacity in Europe 100 percent.

Nishiya also reports that Cabot MMD's newly introduced polishing solutions have been successfully integrated at multiple fabs in Japan and throughout the Asia-Pacific region. He cited the success of the company's Semi-Sperse(R) W2585 slurry for tungsten damascene CMP, which enables improved device performance and higher yields for chipmakers.

Cabot MMD executives are available to meet with the press during SEMICON Japan, Dec. 1-3, at booth 7-A205.

Cabot Corporation's Microelectronics Materials Division (www.cabot-corp.com/mmd), Aurora, Ill., is the leading global supplier of CMP slurries for polishing oxide, tungsten, copper and aluminum used in semiconductor manufacturing processes. Cabot MMD is a division of Cabot Corp. (www.cabot-corp.com). 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 $1.67 billion in 1998. Its common stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CBT.