Western Digital is set to close down its Kelana Jaya factory after over 20 years producing hard drives. This is part of shifting production from platter-based to flash-based storage devices.
Since its beginnings in 1973, Western Digital has been a part of the Malaysian IT scene, with plants in several sites around Malaysia. One plant, run by WD’s subsidiary HGST in Penang was closed down in 2016; leaving two hard-drive substrate manufacturing sites in Johor and Kuching, plus a solid-state drive plant in Penang.
When asked, a WD spokesperson told UK news site The Register, “the data technology industry is undergoing substantial change. This market transformation is driving increased adoption of SSDs and NAND flash in traditional HDD applications. The change has contributed to growth in SSD/NAND flash and declining long-term demand for client HDDs. Consequently, Western Digital plans to expand SSD manufacturing in Penang. The company is in the final stages of commissioning its second SSD facility in Penang, which will go into production in the coming months.”
WD is slowly transitioning to focus more on solid-state storage drive production thanks to its joint-venture with Toshiba. Unfortunately, this comes with a drawback of the loss of a landmark in Petaling Jaya.
(Source: The Register)
