Under the agreement, a portion of the land, buildings and equipment of Fujitsu’s manufacturing subsidiary, Fujitsu (Thailand) Company Ltd., will be sold to Western Digital, and around 1,100 employees will be able to continue their employment under the new ownership. Further terms of the sale are not being disclosed.
The sale follows on Fujitsu’s global restructuring initiative, announced in August, which includes a strategic shift in its HDD business to concentrate on high-growth mobile and enterprise HDD markets while withdrawing from the desktop HDD segment. Within this context, certain desktop HDD manufacturing assets at Fujitsu Thailand have become superfluous, and Fujitsu has made the decision to dispose of them. At the same time, giving due consideration to the impact on the local economy and employment, Fujitsu has endeavored to minimize such dislocations, and the agreement reached with Western Digital reflects this aim.
Fujitsu Thailand will continue to manufacture high-quality, high-performance HDD products, focusing on the mobile segment of the market, which is seen as having greater growth prospects going forward.
