Fujifilm plans to spend ¥10 billion ($63 million) at its Odawara plant in Japan to raise magnetic-tape output to five times its 2025 level by fiscal 2028, Blocks & Files reported on 28 October. The planned expansion would add manufacturing capacity for tapes used to archive data held by data centres.
Key points
- Fujifilm is targeting tape output five times its 2025 level by fiscal 2028.
- The ¥10 billion investment is directed at its Odawara manufacturing plant.
- LTO tape shipments rose 57% in the first quarter of 2026.
- Planned production includes tapes with capacities of up to 100 TB.
¥10 billion for Fujifilm’s Odawara plant
The spending is Fujifilm’s largest investment in tape-based storage in around 20 years, Tom’s Hardware reported. It put the dollar equivalent at $63.3 million, while Blocks & Files reported $63 million. Both reports put the investment at ¥10 billion.
Fujifilm would bear the cost of increasing capacity at Odawara, in Kanagawa Prefecture. The production target is measured against the company’s 2025 output and falls in fiscal 2028. The investment is directed at manufacturing tape, rather than building a data centre or purchasing storage capacity from an operator.
Fujifilm began work on magnetic tape technology in 1954, when tape was used in television broadcasting equipment, Tom’s Hardware reported. Its current expansion is aimed at data-centre storage. The planned production includes more advanced tapes capable of holding up to 100 TB each.
LTO shipments rose 57% in early 2026
Shipments of Linear Tape-Open, or LTO, tape rose 57% in the first quarter of 2026, Blocks & Files reported. LTO is a magnetic-tape storage format. The publication attributed the increase to shipments of the new LTO-10 format and demand to archive more data, including material used to train AI systems.
Archival storage serves information that is kept for long periods but accessed infrequently. Tape is used for that work because it offers lower storage costs than hard disks or SSDs, although accessing data on tape is slower. Tom’s Hardware reported that storing data on tape can cost as little as one-quarter as much as storing it on hard disks.
The current LTO-10 format holds 40 TB of uncompressed data per cartridge, or 100 TB at a 2.5:1 compression ratio, according to Blocks & Files. Those figures distinguish the tape’s raw capacity from the higher capacity attainable when the data can be compressed at that ratio.
A future LTO-11 format is specified at up to 70 TB raw and 175 TB compressed capacity. The publication said LTO-11 might arrive in 2028 or 2029, potentially placing Fujifilm’s expanded manufacturing capacity alongside a change in tape format.
Sony and Toshiba face the same storage demand
Sony is the other LTO tape manufacturer, Blocks & Files reported. Fujifilm’s plan concerns the medium used for low-access archival data. Hard disks remain another part of the data-centre storage market: AI Affairs previously reported Toshiba’s plan to spend ¥60 billion to double AI data-centre hard-disk capacity by fiscal 2027.
The LTO roadmap extends to cartridges holding 365 TB. That is a prospective format capacity, rather than the capacity of the LTO-10 cartridges currently shipping. Fujifilm’s production plan centres on its Odawara facility and an output target for fiscal 2028.
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