Toshiba Corp. is planning to grow its production capacity in the Philippines to manufacture more nearline hard disk drives (NL-HDDs), as demand for large-scale data storage continues to climb, according to the Philippine Department of Finance (DoF).

In a statement issued on Monday, the DoF said the planned NL-HDD expansion is expected to generate 3,000 jobs.

“We see Toshiba’s planned expansion as an opportunity to strengthen our industrial base, build an electronics and tech industry ecosystem that creates quality jobs, and position the Philippines to capture opportunities in the growing global technology and data economy,” Finance Secretary Frederick D. Go was quoted as saying.

NL-HDDs provide high-capacity storage for data centers, whose storage requirements keep rising with the expansion of cloud computing, artificial intelligence, digital services, and other data-intensive technologies. Nearline drives anchor the bulk-storage tier of that infrastructure, where capacity and cost per terabyte outweigh raw speed — a trade-off that has kept spinning disks central to cloud-scale storage even as flash adoption widens.

The Philippines has served as a major production base for Toshiba’s electronics manufacturing business since 1995, with a particular focus on hard disk drives. Toshiba Information Equipment (Philippines), Inc. operates two production facilities in Laguna province — one in the Laguna Technopark–Special Economic Zone and another in the Carmelray Industrial Park–Special Economic Zone.

The company’s Philippine operations cover the manufacturing and assembly of hard disk drives, enterprise solid-state drives, and advanced helium-filled HDDs, as well as engineering and design services, rework, and printed circuit board assembly. Toshiba is one of only three hard disk drive makers left worldwide — alongside Seagate and Western Digital — placing its Laguna operations in the small pool of suppliers serving data center storage demand.

“Toshiba’s latest investment reinforces the company’s long-term commitment to the country while creating opportunities to deepen local supply-chain linkages, develop Filipino talent, and expand higher-value manufacturing activities,” the DoF said.

The expansion aligns with Manila’s broader effort to move its electronics sector beyond assembly, test, and packaging toward advanced manufacturing, amid growing demand for artificial intelligence-backed hardware. Under the Philippine Semiconductor and Electronics Industry Roadmap, the country has set a target of $70 billion in semiconductor exports and $40 billion in electronics by 2030 — benchmarks against which projects like this expansion fit into the country’s push up the technology value chain.

— Beatriz Marie D. Cruz, BusinessWorld