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Fujifilm getting it taped - quintupling production Buoyed by a 57 percent rise in LTO tape shipments in the first three months of 2026, Fujifilm is planning to increase LTO tape output fivefold. The 2026 Q1 jump was due to new LTO-10 tape format shipments and demand to archive more data, for such things as AI training data. Storing that low access rate data on disk would be prohibitively expensive and tape is the only feasible, low-cost per TB medium available. Alternatives like holography are still in early stage development and DNA archival storage is in an even earlier state, making it a 5-10 year prospect, if not later. As reported by AsiaNikkei (paywall), Fujifilm, seeing a long-term trend, is responding to it by boosting its tape manufacturing capacity such that fiscal 2028 output will be five times its 2025 level. This is going to be funded by a ¥10 billion ($63 million) investment at its plant in Odawara, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. Current LTO-10 technology has tape reels with 40 TB raw capacity, 100 TB at a 2.5:1 compression ration, with a forthcoming LTO-11 format having up to 70 TB raw capacity, 175 TB compressed. We might reasonably expect the LTO-11 format to be introduced by 2028. By then also Everpure-backed Cerabyte might have introduced it’s ceramic-on-glass archival storage technology with better than tape economics. However the world’s installed tape library population is not going to switch over any time soon, giving Fujifilm a long, multi-year runway from which to see LTO tape sales take off with AI demand assistance. Assuming the AsiaNikkei report is correct then we may well see Sony, the other LTO tape manufacturer, increase its output as well. A corollary to this is that tape library shipments may well rise, to neoclouds for example, which would be good news for Quantum, Spectra Logic and other tape library system suppliers. All-in-all, AI is now revitalising the entire storage industry.
document fetched 2026-10-29 03:01 · canonical https://blocksandfiles.com/tape/2026/10/28/fujifilm-getting-it-taped-quintupling-production/5306015