History (1994): Fujitsu, HP, IBM, MKE and Quantum Turning to Southeast Asia

IBM’s Japanese HDD plant in Fujisawa is one of the largest in the world with a production just below 2 million devices in 1993, almost 10% of the worldwide production.

Big Blue decided to move all its 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch drive production, which means about all of them, to Thailand in the first half of 1994 to reduce the manufacturing costs. New drive development as well as new manufacturing techniques will remain in Japan. One part of the 3.5-inch drives was already subcontracted to a big manufacturing firm in Thailand, Saha Union Corp.

Quantum Corp (Milpitas, CA) is setting up a joint venture with its manufacturer partner Matsushita – Kotokubi Electronics Industries Ltd. of Japan to produce HDD drives in Penang, Malaysia. Quantum Peripherals (Malaysia) is expected to employ 200 people when operational. Until then, most of Quantum’s HDDs were manufactured in Japan and in Ireland by MKE. Additionally, the Japanese firm said it would invest more than $26 million to set up a new disk drive plant in Singapore and sell its output to Quantum.

Fujitsu of Japan is also transferring production of its small HDDs from Japan to Southeast Asia, this time in Thailand.

Hewlett-Packard has under construction a new HDD manufacturing plant in Penang (Malaysia). Production is scheduled to begin 4Q94 with high capacity 3.5-inch devices. This plant will add to another one of HP that already manufactured electronic components. The company already has manufacturing plants in Boise (Idaho) and Bristol (UK).

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠73, published on February 1994.