Pixiq

Tokyo, 5^th April 2011: The Nikon Corporation has announced that total production for Nikkor interchangeable lens for Nikon SLR cameras reached 60-million during March 2011. Previously, during August 2010, Nikon had announced that the total for Nikkor lens production had reached 55-million.

Of the sixty lenses in the Nikkor range it is the dozen or so consumer grade Nikkors manufactured at Nikon Thailand, such as the AF-S VR 24-120mm f/4G, AF-S VR 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G and the DX Nikkors that account for a very significant proportion of total lens production, which has clearly been prolific. Therefore, despite the challenges to confront the company recently, following the devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami that struck in the north-east of Japan on 11^th March, production of these mainstream Nikkor lenses will probably be largely unaffected by the disaster.

As reported in my article about the effects of the earthquake on Nikon’s manufacturing capacity, production of camera and lens mount rings, of which tens of thousands are required each month, has been shifted from Nikon Sendai and outsourced to a company located in Malaysia.

However, manufacture of the professional grade Nikkor lenses, those marked as ‘Made in Japan’, which are produced at the Nikon Tochigi plant, which is approximately mid-way between Tokyo and Sendai, will undoubtedly have been interrupted and will continue to be influenced by the on-going situation on the Japanese mainland, including the effects of planned power outages. 

© Simon Stafford