The Board of Investment (BOI) has granted investment incentives to Western Digital Storage Technologies (Thailand), an American hard disk drive manufacturer which is expanding its business under a 23-billion-baht investment to benefit from the growing cloud and data centre industry.
The new investment of Western Digital, widely known as WD, will support its production facilities in Bang Pa-in Industrial Estate in Ayutthaya and the 304 Industrial Park in Prachin Buri.
"The business expansion of WD is good for the cloud and data centre businesses and will help drive the development of S-curved industries in Thailand," said Narit Therdsteerasukdi, secretary-general of the BOI.
WD has so far employed more than 28,000 workers since its investment in the country in 1997.
At present, up to 80% of hard disk drives in the global market are produced in Thailand by key manufacturers, including WD and Seagate.
Western Digital Storage Technologies is a subsidiary of California-based WD, which has become a large company since taking over the data storage businesses of Fujitsu, Hitachi, ScanDisk and Komag.
WD commands a 40% market share in the global hard disk drive sector.
The additional investment of WD in Thailand is expected to boost hard disk drive exports, with additional value worth 200 billion a year. It will also create 10,000 more jobs.
This will bring advantages to other businesses, including printed circuit board assembly, metal and plastic material manufacturing and the power supply business, said Mr Narit.
"The value of these related businesses is expected to reach 81 billion a year," he said.
According to Mr Narit, WD's investment shows the hard disk drive business continues to grow as data storage and processing systems are crucial for the cloud and data centre industry.
