Fri, Apr 12, 2024 page12

• Gudeng to build factory in Japan

  FIRST FORAY: The maker of EUV pods said it plans to begin the construction of the plant later this year, with mass production expected to start next year

  • By Lisa Wang / Staff reporter, with Bloomberg
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  Gudeng Precision Industrial Co (家登精密), the sole extreme ultraviolet (EUV) pod supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), plans to build a plant in Japan in an effort to help customers boost supply chain resiliency, it said yesterday.

  The NT$500 million (US$15.52 million) investment is a response to requests by key customers to build capacity outside Taiwan and China amid escalating geopolitical tensions, it said.

  The plant would be built in Fukuoka Prefecture’s Kurume, which is about a one-hour drive from TSMC’s fab in Kumamoto Prefecture’s Kikuyo, Gudeng said.

  

  Gudeng Precision Industrial Co chairman Bill Chiu, second left, and other company executives gesture at a media event in Taipei yesterday.

  Photo: Grace Hung, Taipei Times

  Gudeng plans to begin the construction of its first overseas plant later this year, with mass production expected next year, it said.

  Gudegn's capacity expansion came after TSMC launched its first fab in Kumamoto on Feb. 24 and said it plans to build a second fab there. The first facility is on track to enter volume production by the end of this year, the chipmaker has said.

  “We are committed to helping customers with their business plans,” Gudeng chairman Bill Chiu (邱銘乾) told reporters at a media gathering in Taipei. “For that reason, we have to implement the ‘Taiwan+1’ production strategy. Japan is a good option given its proximity to Taiwan.”

  “Kurume will be an important manufacturing hub for Gudeng to serve customers’ long-term capacity expansion in Japan,” Chiu said. “We want to provide service close to our customers’ fabs.”

  Japan has a better opportunity to become a high-end chip supplier beyond Taiwan, given its experienced workers and government support, Chiu said.

  Gudeng plans to assemble box-like front-opening unified pods (FOUP) and some EUV pods at the Kurume plant, while most advanced parts would be made in Taiwan.

  The company said it has no plans to build capacity in Dresden, Germany, given the challenges of labor unions and less capacity.

  In the US, Gudeng has set up a company in charge of distributing and delivering its products and semiconductor equipment in alliance with its local semiconductor equipment partners, it said.

  Gudeng yesterday said revenue this year would outgrow its January estimate of 20 percent annually, thanks to increasing demand for FOUP and EUV pods as customers in Taiwan and China are expanding capacity.

  Revenue last quarter grew 7.2 percent annually to NT$1.42 billion.

  Separately, French chip materials company Soitec SA is considering building a factory in the US, as customers including TSMC win incentives from states from Arizona to Texas for significant expansion.

  Soitec is considering a US plant alongside existing facilities in Singapore, Belgium and France as one of the options to grow its business, chief executive officer Pierre Barnabe told Bloomberg News.

  The company, which develops specialty materials that meld with silicon wafers for semiconductors, counts TSMC among its biggest clients.

  TSMC this week said that it is to build a third factory in Arizona with US$11.6 billion in grants and loans from the US.

  “We are in a decoupling of our world and we need to be present,” Barnabe said during a visit to Taiwan this week. “Being in the US also allows us to be quicker in addressing our customers.”

  Like other chip industry firms, Soitec is grappling with a growing thicket of restrictions on China as the US tries to contain its rival’s tech industry. Barnabe said that while export controls over semiconductors are creating challenges, he doesn’t expect them to impact the company’s sales to the world’s No. 2 economy.

  While Soitec is no longer able to license advanced technology to China, its partnership with Shanghai Simgui Technology Co (上海新傲科技) — which licensed technology 10 years ago — remains an important one, he said.

  The company has traditionally relied heavily on the smartphone arena but is diversifying into the business of silicon carbide chip materials for electric vehicles, as well as material for super low-power chips for devices such as security cameras.

  French research center CEA-Leti — which backed Soitec at its inception decades ago — invented that latter technology and is expecting to receive European Union Chips Act funding to further advance the technology with a new pilot production line, CEO Sebastien Dauve told Bloomberg News.
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