Singulus Technologies reports increasing sales and earnings figures for its optical discs manufacturing equipment division. Orders for Blu-ray production lines went up more than expected owing to a healthy growth of the BD disc market. The company is within the range of its own full-year forecast and projects 45 to 50 new machine orders for the year.

The company notes that its traditional customers continue to invest in the production of Blu-ray discs, a demand that will grow unabated.

According to the German Association of Audiovisual Media, the high-definition disc format exceeded the triple-digit million Euro mark for the first time in Germany with Blu-ray sales of €104 million in the first half of 2011 – against €82 million in 2010. Currently, one in six Euro is generated with sales of Blu-ray discs.

Since most of the blockbusters like Harry Potter in 2D and 3D, the Star Wars saga, X-Factor are released in the second half of 2011, Singulus projects a further increase of Blu-ray sales figures in the next couple of months.

More than 5,500 movies are currently available on Blu-ray disc in Germany, with a further 849 titles due to be released by year-end.

Futuresource Consulting forecasts a global production of 811 million Blu-ray discs in 2011 – an increase of 38 % compared with 2010. In the US, the biggest Blu-ray market, the production volume is even set to expand by 49 %. Similar growth figures are projected for Europe in 2011.

In addition, Futuresource expects the minimum required global production capacity of machines for the manufacturing of Blu-ray discs to grow from about 1.274 billion discs in 2010 to 1.736 billion discs in 2011. The analysts expect 2.952 billion discs by 2015.

Story filed 26.10.11