Resonac, a Japanese company formerly known as Showa Denko, has revealed a significant expansion in its hard disk drive (HDD) recording media business, specifically the internal platters where data is stored. The company announced it will increase its annual production capacity by 31%, raising it from the current 160 million platters per year to 210 million platters. The rollout of new production lines is scheduled to commence gradually starting in 2027, contingent on market developments.
The core of Resonac’s announcement is its role as a manufacturer of a critical HDD component: magnetic platters, rather than complete hard drives. These recording media are vital for manufacturers like Seagate, Western Digital, and Toshiba to continue increasing the production capacity of enterprise HDDs. In an era where high-capacity hard drives are regaining prominence due to the massive storage needs of data centers for AI applications, any bottleneck in platter production can directly impact the availability of high-capacity nearline drives.
Resonac’s Platter Production Increase is Good News for the Overall Market
The expansion will be centered at Resonac HD Singapore Pte. Ltd., the company’s Singaporean subsidiary. To achieve this, Resonac will install new equipment at this plant and repurpose some idle machinery from recently closed facilities, including its former Taiwan line, aiming for improved investment efficiency. Resonac HD Singapore is positioned as the primary HD media manufacturing hub within the Resonac group, featuring automated lines capable of producing advanced media.
This move comes at a particularly critical juncture for the storage market. The surge in generative artificial intelligence, the expansion of cloud computing, and the growth of data centers have dramatically increased the demand for affordable storage per terabyte. While SSDs excel in performance, nearline HDDs (for enterprise use) remain essential for cold storage, backups, historical archives, and large volumes of data that do not require ultra-fast access. TrendForce had previously warned in September 2025 that AI inference-related demand was causing a severe shortage of nearline HDDs, with lead times extending from a few weeks to over 52 weeks.
The positive implications of this development are straightforward. With existing shortages in nearline HDDs, this expansion suggests that HDD manufacturers will prioritize the production of nearline drives over consumer-grade ones. This mirrors the strategy seen in CPUs, GPUs, RAM, and SSDs, where production is redirected from low-margin consumer products to higher-margin enterprise products that are in high demand. Essentially, this shift redirects manufacturing capacity to products that not only offer significantly better profit margins but are also in high demand and often paid for in advance. Therefore, this news offers relief and is expected to ease price pressures in the consumer market.
Thanks to AI, HDDs are Not Only More Relevant Than Ever but Will Continue to Push Boundaries
The technological landscape also supports this type of investment. Seagate is already marketing drives with capacities up to 30 TB utilizing its Mozaic 3+ platform with HAMR technology, specifically targeting data center and AI storage demands. Western Digital, in turn, has announced ePMR drives with capacities up to 32 TB using UltraSMR and 26 TB using CMR. To achieve this, they are even employing an 11-platter platform to increase density without altering the physical form factor of the drive.
Consequently, Resonac’s announcement should not be viewed as an isolated industrial expansion. It is a clear indicator that the enterprise HDD market is entering a new phase of demand pressure. Data centers require increased capacity, drive manufacturers are advancing technologies like HAMR, MAMR, ePMR, and SMR, and intermediate suppliers like Resonac must ramp up production of key components to support this transition. Therefore, having access to an additional 50 million platters per year will significantly aid these companies.
