Nikon - impressing or what?!

Despite severe natural disasters, Nikon is able to produce marvels like the D800 and beat market expectations

On the face of it 2011 has been a torrid year for Nikon. They suffered from the tsunami disaster, just as many other Japanese companies did, but much more serious was the incapacitating of their huge manufacturing facility in Thailand because of unprecedented seasonal flooding back in October. But despite all that and global economic problems, Nikon exceeded market analyst expectations in 2011 and their share price is currently soaring.

Yesterday at the Nikon D800 launch I spoke to Michio Miwa, who heads Nikon UK and asked him about how things are in Thailand at the moment.

Mr Miwa confirmed that things were progressing but manufacturing had not yet restarted. The entire ground floor of the facility was devastated by the flood which reached three metres in height (nearly 10 feet). The site is one of the largest camera manufacturing facilities in the world and employs 12,000 staff, with temporary staff sometimes boosting that figure to over 15,000. Both compact cameras and DSLRs are manufactured there, as well as some lenses.

Nikon has managed to relocate some of the the production lines to other factories in places like Malaysia and China, but availability of some key products was affected in the key Christmas period.

According to Miwa, the Thailand factory should restart production next month, ramping up to full production later in the year.

I don't think Nikon's product range has ever been stronger. With some notable exceptions I've not personally been wowed a lot by Nikon compact cameras over the years, but the latest batch launched last week looks strong, while the new Nikon 1 V1 and J1 compact system camera models are doing extremely well and Nikon's DSLR system, recently topped out by the new D4 and D800 simply confirms Nikon's current across the board strength.