Toshiba plans to invest about JPY 60 billion (about PHP 24 billion) to expand hard disk drive production in the Philippines as AI data centers drive demand for more storage, Nikkei Asia reported.
The expansion centers on Toshiba Information Equipment (Philippines), Inc. (TIP), the Philippine HDD manufacturing company of Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation.
TIP has already begun producing nearline HDDs at its Laguna Technopark facility and recently shipped the first drives from the expanded production line.
Toshiba is targeting nearly twice its FY2025 annual Philippine production capacity by FY2027 on a storage-capacity basis. The company will add production lines and manufacture new HDDs capable of storing up to 40% more data per drive.
Nearline HDDs are high-capacity drives used primarily in data centers. TIP previously produced them at its Carmelray Industrial Park facility, while the Laguna Technopark plant focused mainly on HDDs for personal computers.
The JPY 60 billion investment would be Toshiba’s first major expansion of its HDD business in about five years. Toshiba currently accounts for just over 10% of the global HDD market by storage capacity and wants to raise that share to 30% over the medium term.
The company is also developing higher-capacity drives as AI and cloud operators generate and store growing amounts of data. Toshiba is targeting mass production of 65TB-class HDDs in 2030 and eventually plans to develop 100TB-class drives, according to Nikkei.
Part of the Philippine investment will go toward automating inspection and cleanroom operations. The changes are expected to reduce the additional staffing normally required for the expansion by about 40% while improving production yields.
TIP has manufactured storage products in the Philippines since 1996. It now operates three facilities across Laguna Technopark and Carmelray Industrial Park, producing HDDs and SSDs for data center, enterprise, surveillance, and client markets.