Thailand’s Board of Investment (BOI) announced on Monday the approval of Western Digital Storage Technologies (Thailand) Company Limited’s 23.5 billion baht ($693 million) project aimed at expanding hard disk drive production in the country.
The move comes as the demand for cloud technology and data center services continues to rise. The investment is projected to significantly benefit the Thai economy by generating exports worth 200 billion baht annually and creating an additional 10,000 job opportunities, as stated by the BOI.
Western Digital Corporation is an American computer drive manufacturer and data storage company, headquartered in San Jose, California. The company designs, manufactures and sells data technology products, including data storage devices, data center systems and cloud storage services.
Currently, Western Digital’s Thai facility employs 28,000 individuals in Thailand, a country that accounts for 80% of the world’s hard disk drive production, according to the BOI. Over the past decade, Thailand has greenlit investments totaling 82.6 billion baht in the hard disk industry.
In the previous year, its competitor Seagate expanded its operations with a 16 billion baht investment. With these developments, Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy anticipates that total investment applications for the year 2024 will reach 800 billion baht.
The significant expansion of investment by Western Digital is expected to bring substantial benefits to the Thai economy. It is projected to increase exports by over 200 billion baht annually and create jobs for more than 10,000 for Thai individuals, while also fostering positive impacts on related businesses.
The project will utilize domestic raw materials such as Printed Circuit Board Assemblies (PCBAs), metal and plastic components, Power Supply units and others, amounting to a total value exceeding 81,000 million baht annually. This constitutes over 45% of the total raw material value.
