Seagate aims to invest $100-$200m in Kingdom annually

Dave Mosley, executive vice president for operations at the giant manufacturer of hard disk drives (HDDs), said at “Seagate Supplier Day 2012” that Thailand was strategically important for the company.
With that much annual investment, Seagate will increase the production capability of both its plants, by 20-25 per cent for HDDs and 25-40 per cent for components by 2015.
Currently, Thailand supplies 20 per cent of Seagate’s HDD shipments in the global market. The other 80 per cent comes from its two factories in China and its outsourcers.
Last year, even though much of Thailand was flooded, Seagate managed to ship 60 million HDDs to the global market.
“Just in the last quarter of our fiscal year – March to June 2012 – Seagate supplied 66 million HDD units to the world market. Now we have a 42-per-cent of market share,” Mosley said.
He said the company always used multiple sources and multiple locations to ensure steady HDD manufacturing. Currently, it has more than 2,000 suppliers around the world, and about 300 of these are direct suppliers in 170 countries.
In Thailand, Seagate has two plants, in Nakhon Ratchasima and in Thepharak, Samut Prakan. The plant in Korat is the company’s largest manufacturing base in terms of variety of products, while the one in Thepharak is the production base for HDD components.
The HDD industry worldwide is growing by 50 per cent per year.