History 2002: Seagate Expands in China

Nearly all of Seagate Technology’s HDDs are now assembled in Singapore or China.

The company recently decided to quadruple drive production in its Wuxi plant, located in Jiangsu province, outside of Shanghai, in the coming 6 to 12 months. The expanded plant, occupying 35,000 square meters of factory floor with class 10 cleanrooms, will house PCB and disk assembly lines as well as testing operations.

Conner Peripherals was the first HDD maker to set up shop in China, in Shenzhen, followed 2 years later, in 1995, by Seagate in Wuxi, where soon nearly 50% of all its devices, essentially low-end units for PCs and consumer electronics products, will be produced.

At the same time, Seagate sold its HDD repair and warranty facility in Reynosa, Mexico along with certain related assets to Jabil Global Services, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Jabil Circuit. Seagate Technology Reynosa was formed in 1997 in a 41,000 square-foot plant employing 1,800 workers.

Note that over the past 3 years, Seagate has closed 14 facilities and reduced its workforce by 38,000 people.

The company now counts only 46,000 employees WW, including 34,000 in Asia alone. Most are involved in manufacturing. 445 worldwide work in sales, another 345 in marketing.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 178 on November 2002 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.