Fujifilm to boost tape production 5x as AI fuels archiving demand

Fujifilm plans to spend about 10 billion yen ($63 million) to increase magnetic-tape production capacity fivefold compared with fiscal 2025 levels. The expansion at its Kanagawa Factory’s Odawara site will run from fiscal 2026 through 2028, adding manufacturing capacity and staff, with production focused mainly on its latest LTO Ultrium 10 tape. Fujifilm says generative AI is driving rapid growth in global data needs and, in turn, demand for long-term storage. Its investment is the company’s largest yet in facilities dedicated to LTO tape.

Tape remains important for large cloud and data-center operators even though it has largely disappeared from consumer use. It stores large volumes of data at relatively low cost, and cartridges can be disconnected and kept separately from computer networks. That air-gapped backup makes tape useful as a defense against ransomware and other cyberattacks. Fujifilm has worked on magnetic data storage since the 1950s and entered the LTO market in 2000; successive generations have increased storage capacity. Its 2025 LTO-10 release introduced fine hybrid magnetic particles combining barium ferrite and strontium ferrite technologies. The planned production increase reflects the continued role of physical, offline media alongside expanding digital storage needs.