Toshiba to Close Thai HDD Factory. Source

Toshiba has four HDD assembly plants in the world,
R&D being in Japan and USA:

• two in the Philippines (Toshiba Information Equipment (Philippines), Inc. or TIP), its biggest one, in Binan Laguna (TIP/Philippines) and a smaller one in Calamba Laguna (Site 2/Philippines) both of them following the acquisition of Fujitsu HDD business in October 2009
• one in Shenzhen, China, SAE/China (through disk head maker SAE/TDK, contract manufacturing partner)
• one in Navanakorn Industrial Estate Zone, Pathum Thani, Thailand, named Toshiba Storage Device (Thailand), Co., Ltd. or TSDT

The north central Thai plant, producing 9.6 million drives per quarter according to TrendFocus, suffers greatly from the flood. With water two meter high, access of the factory was prohibited but no employees have been injured. The plant stopped to produce HDDs at the beginning of October last year.

        
    Toshiba plant in Thailand before flood …
                    (Photo: Toshiba)

           
          
                 … and after flood
(Photo: Pornchai Kittiwongsakul/AFP/Getty Images)

On December 5, 2011, the Japanese company said that "the water level has fallen to approximately 70 centimeters" and that "the date of resumption of operation is unpredictable at this moment."

The firm rapidly reallocated Thai production in others plants and hesitated to rebuild its factory in Navanakorn.

According to a executive veteran from a big storage systems company, Toshiba has decided not to pursue disk assembly in Thailand anymore – resulting on around 4,200 employees losing their job – and to transfer all the production – mainly 2.5-inch HDDs – in China and the Philippines.

He added that he learned that an executive of the Toshiba’s disk division went for two days in Brussels, Belgium. To discuss with EU concerning the acquisition of some WD’s 3.5-inch HDD assets?