The Minebea Company (Tokyo, Japan) is planning to make additional investments of several billion Yen in its Thailand operations during the upcoming fiscal year. The Thailand plants are in Ayutthaya and Bang Pai-in.

Tosei Takenaka, head of Minebea Asia, indicated a quarter of the total investment will go strictly toward ramping up production of a new generation of spindle motors for computer hard disk drives. These motors use fluid dynamic bearings, demand for which is growing faster than Minebea can increase production.

Computer disk drives using fluid dynamic bearings are more stable, more reliable and capable of much higher storage capacity and much higher speeds than the ball bearing motors commonly used up to now.

The company reports advance orders for fluid dynamic bearing motors (to disk drive maker Seagate Technology) are 1.2 million units for October 2001, 1.4 million in November, 1.8 million in December and over 2 million in January 2002.

Fluid dynamic bearings are manufactured in a special area of the Bang Pai-in factory, completed this past March. Production capacity is currently limited to 1 million units per month, but 3.7 billion Yen is being spent in Bang Pai-in to increase its capacity to 2.5 million units per month by the end of 2001.

Through October 2001, Seagate Technology has an exclusive contract to purchase Minebea's total production of fluid dynamic HDD spindle motors. That contract expires on November 1, at which time Minebea indicates it will begin aggressively pursuing other disk drive manufacturers.

Demand for ball bearing motors is declining, but gradually. Minebea reports orders for 3 million units through the end of 2001.

Existing projects will take the other 75% of Minebea's planned investments in Thailand, primarily expanding production of miniature ball bearings and computer keyboards.

Minebea is the world's largest manufacturer of miniature and precision instrument bearings. In bearings and other products, it employs 45,000 people in 39 manufacturing facilities across 10 countries. Minebea commands a 65% world market share of ball bearings 22mm and under.