Western Digital Thailand factory has been remanufactured in March next year

On December 1st, local time, the Western Digital issued an official statement that looked forward to the outlook for the second quarter of fiscal 2012 and announced the status of the company's previously submerged factory in Thailand.

Western Digital was located in a factory in Bang Pa-in, Thailand. The water level was about 2m deep on October 15th. The company announced that the drainage was completed on November 17, and the power supply resumed on the 26th. The hard disk production line was restarted on the 30th and the actual recovery was completed. Progress was earlier than one week in advance.

However, the company's current water plant in Navanokorn, Thailand, is still nearly 60cm deep, and drainage operations are expected to start after the 10th. And Bang Pa-in's previously inundated head slider production equipment needs to be fully evaluated, decontaminated, and reworked. Bang-Pa in's slider production will resume in March 2012; however, Western Digital also plans to A new factory built in Penang, Malaysia, began producing sliders.

Western Digital predicts that in the second quarter of this financial year, that is, October-December, the industry’s total hard disk demand will reach 170-108 million pieces, and the total supply will be only 120 million pieces. This situation will continue until the end of the third quarter (March next year and beyond), after which supply and demand will return to balance.

Western Digital estimates that the company’s spending on the floods in Thailand will reach 225-270 million U.S. dollars.