Nikon to stop production at two lens factories in March

Nikon to cease operations at two of its interchangeable lens production factories in March
Published Wednesday, February 3, 2021 11:55:00 PM GMT
According to a report from Nikkei Shimbun, Nikon will cease operations at its Nagai and Aizu plants at the end of March, leaving just a single factory for domestic interchangeable lens production.

So export lens are being assembled in Vietnam?

Hear that? It's the roar of used market prices rocketing.

Paul Howell said:

So export lens are being assembled in Vietnam?

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Thailand

My guess is that in the future only the expensive pro-type Nikon lenses will be made in Japan.

Sad. Chasing cheap labor. I bought a used Nikkor 17-35 f2.8 D AF-S, got it yesterday. What a beautiful object. Metal filter threads, imagine that!

Sigma makes everything in Japan, even make their own teeny screws. Pay a living wage, what a concept.

As usual I'm a shoot first ask questions later. Sounds like production has all but stopped at these two locations before this announcement. Around 150 employees directly effected. Will be offered transfer to other plants.
Reality is that sales continue to plummet. Good news is higher end stuff is still the focus. In the last 2 years I've bought more, actually new, Nikon product than I've purchased in the 25 years prior. I'm not disappointed. The D6 is amazing, I bought the newest (made in Japan ) medium and tele f2.8 zooms. All this stuff is way better than before. Still all the plastic, it's not the same as the pro AF-D lenses of the 90's in terms of finish.
Still Nikon got the D6 right for me as it's just an evolution of the F5, D3, D5. Why the latest 70 to 200 switched the position of the zoom and focus ring around is beyond me?

Nikon is still clockwise to remove, CCW to mount somethings don't change.

mshchem said:

Sad. Chasing cheap labor. I bought a used Nikkor 17-35 f2.8 D AF-S, got it yesterday. What a beautiful object. Metal filter threads, imagine that!

Sigma makes everything in Japan, even make their own teeny screws. Pay a living wage, what a concept.

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I am no expert....but they seem to have gotten better over their (many) years of business and are still family owned.
Maybe there is hope in the world.

None of this implies a drop in quality. That's determined by other factors. Not only is labor cost higher in Japan, but notably, now energy prices. Other kinds of industrial manufacturing facilities necessarily began scaling back or relocating as far back as the Fukushima power plant disaster. Current economic pressures from the pandemic have made things a lot worse. And then there's the fact of high-quality lenses for Nikon now being made under Zeiss and Voigtlander labels, for example, undercutting demand for theirs. There's already a glut of good lenses on the used market. No worries from me.

CMoore said:

I am no expert....but they seem to have gotten better over their (many) years of business and are still family owned.
Maybe there is hope in the world.

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I agree

These two factories were extremely small: One had a bit more than 50 employees, the other one a bit more than 100.
Not surprisingly at all that such small operations are closed and relocated to bigger, more efficient factories (which is the case here). It is more surprising that Nikon had run such very small factories for so long.
As the very strong decline in digital camera sales continues (another huge drop of -41.2% last year: http://cipa.jp/stats/documents/e/d-2020_e.pdf) all of the bigger digital camera manufacturers are working on restructuring and cutting costs. It is an absolute necessity, as this very strong digital camera sales decline will continue for several more years.

Best regards,
Henning