EMC Corp, the US-based data storage systems company, will invest $20 million (€23.20 million) in its manufacturing and services facility in Ovens, Cork, creating an additional 300 jobs.

Speaking to The Irish Times yesterday on a visit to the Republic, chief executive Mr Michael Ruettgers said the company had applied for planning permission to build a 100,000 square feet extension at its Cork plant.

This would bring total capacity at the facility - which runs all EMC's international customer support, manufacturing, and executive briefing services - to about 600,000 square feet.

EMC currently employs 1,450 people in Cork and this is expected to reach almost 1,800 by the end of the year. The additional jobs will be split between software engineers, customer service personnel and staff in the manufacturing operation.

The company is understood to be looking for additional land in the Cork area to fuel future expansion. Since it established a presence in Cork in 1988, EMC has invested more than $400 million in its Irish operation.

Mr Ruettgers said expansion in Cork was required to cope with booming sales outside of its core US market. Storage systems, software and services generated from the Cork facility are now worth $3 billion annually, from a total of a total of almost $8.5 billion.

"Our second-quarter results released in June showed that our international sales grew faster than our US sales for the first time," he said. "We expect by 2003 we will be selling more internationally than in the the US."

EMC is now ranked 12th in the US and 15th in the world in terms of value, said Mr Ruettgers. However, despite being the best-performing stock on the New York Stock Exchange for the past decade, it is still virtually unknown internationally, he added.

Mr Ruettgers is currently on a tour of Europe, working to raise the profile of the company. He said the firm would spend $100 million on a brand-building exercise next year to create awareness of the company and its products on a global basis. The company, which has been described as an "800 pound gorilla in the data storage market", claims a 60 per cent market share in mainframe storage, 35 per cent in open system hardware, 15 per cent in software and 30 per cent in fibre storage.

Mr Ruettgers said the company would aim to capitalise on huge growth within the data storage market, which he expected to be worth $100 billion by 2005. He said recent announcements from competitors such as Sun Microsystems, Dell and Compaq claiming they would take market share from EMC were based on "virtual markets". EMC is two years ahead of the competition in the data storage space and would be seeking to expand market share over 50 per cent in the lucrative open systems hardware market, he said.

Mr Ruettgers said EMC was establishing data hosting or co-location centres worldwide. However, this was not its core business and was rather a method of understanding customer needs. He said the company would seek to supply partner firms with EMC-accredited infrastructure for such centres. He said the company was currently in talks with two or three such companies in the Republic about supplying "EMC-proven environments". Mr Ruetggers said any further investment or expansion of EMC in the Republic would not be based in Dublin, where it established a sales office in 1994.

"I don't understand why anyone would come into Dublin when the available labour market is practically zero and there are traffic and congestion problems," he said.

Mr Ruettgers said the company would seek to open up dialogue with the Government on the issue of skills shortages and immigration as EMC's investments in the Republic progressed.

He said the Republic was now experiencing similar types of pressures with relation to getting the right type of staff as the US, and Ireland would have to face the prospect of immigration as a means of filling positions.

EMC was first established in the Republic in 1988 when the company's founder and chairman, Mr Dick Egan, reputedly chose Cork because of his ancestral heritage. Mr Ruetggers said sales in the Republic were increasing. EMC's Irish customers include Esat Digifone, Aer Lingus, Bank of Ireland, Ulster Bank, AIB and Eircom.