“Thailand plays a central role in the global hard disk drive industry, accounting for approximately 40 percent of global HDD production capacity. All four major HDD manufacturers—Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi Vantara, and Toshiba—operate core manufacturing facilities in the country.”
“Roughly 60 percent of Western Digital’s production capacity and 50 percent of Toshiba’s capacity are concentrated in Thailand. The country also accounts for 19 percent of global SATA hard drive exports and remains a key location for final HDD assembly. Western Digital’s industrial park in Nakhon Ratchasima is expected to reach a production capacity of 40 million units in 2025, with high-end 40-terabyte production lines representing up to 35 percent of total output. Seagate and other manufacturers have similarly located core assembly and testing operations in Thailand.”
“Because HDDs continue to offer large storage capacity at relatively low cost, they remain essential to global data center storage architectures. As a result, stability in Thailand’s HDD production directly affects data center construction timelines and downstream industries such as server manufacturing and enterprise data storage.”
“The impact of the conflict extends well beyond the HDD sector…”