Nidec Corp. on Friday said that all of its production capacities that make hard disk drive (HDD) motors and HDD motor components had been restored. With supply of hard drive motors back on track, supplies of actual disk drives will start to improve gradually several weeks from now.

Just about one and a half months after severe flooding in Thailand that damaged virtually all of Nidec's manufacturing capacities, the company managed to either resume production or transfer manufacturing to different locations. Nine out of the ten factories of the company and its subsidiaries in the affected areas are back in operation at either their own facilities or alternative locations.

Nidec, which is based on Kyoto, Japan, produces hard disk drive motors (at three factories), HDD motor components (at two facilities) and HDD base plates (at two fabs) in Thailand. All HDD motor factories resumed their operations by December 1, 2011; manufacturing of HDD motor components were back by November 21, 2011; one HDD plate factory in Saraburi province was not damaged, another HDD plate fab is suspended as it had been inundated and water removal was started on November 8. In addition, the firm makes home appliance motors, camera shutters and lens units, inspection fixtures.

At present facilities that resumed operations in Thailand are not working at full utilization. It will take Nidec several weeks before the company manages to increase their utilization to normal levels. In any case, as production of motors and components increases, HDD supplies will also get higher.

"We will continue our efforts to further improve the utilization of the factories whose operations have resumed and to bring the company’s other flood-stricken factories back into operation to the earliest extent  possible. The exact amount of damage and the effect of the floods on the company’s performance are being assessed currently. We will continue to report on any actual or potential impact on the company’s business performance in a prompt manner," a statement by Nidec reads.

Tags: Nidec, HDD, Business, WD, Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi, Toshiba, Samsung