United Microelectronics Corporation (NYSE: UMC)
has
reported
plans to expand capacity at its 300mm Fab 12A Phase 6 (P6) in Taiwan’s Tainan Science Park in a collaboration model with several of its global customers. Under the agreement, customers will make a deposit to secure their long-term chip supply at P6 by using pricing that will enable UMC to grow and meet long term profitability and market relevance goals. The expansion is scheduled for productions within the second quarter of 2023 with a total investment for the project at NT $100 Billion. Previously, UMC announced 2021 CAPEX of USD 1.5 Billion, a large portion of it is allocated towards equipment for the company’s Fab 12A P5 site that is adjacent to P6. The total investment in the Tainan Science Park will reach NT $150 Billion within the next three years.
Stan Hung, chairman of UMC said, “UMC’s expansion plans follow a return based strategy that focuses on business growth while maintaining sustainable profitability. At the same time, we are constantly exploring innovative methods to enhance the competitiveness of our customers. Recent market dynamics have provided us and our customers an opportunity to reinforce our capital expenditure strategy within our ROI boundary, while trying to alleviate the long term capacity constraint in the supply chain. Within these mature 12″ and 8” nodes lies many critical components that play a vital role in the IC supply chain; the combination of these conditions lead us to believe that our role and position as a foundry service are experiencing a structural change that requires an innovative win-win collaboration model in order to help alleviate the industry wide chip shortage. This P6 program is the result of our collaboration. We are pleased to engage on this new capacity expansion project that involves shared commitment from a diversified group of customers.”
SC Chien, co-president at UMC, added, “This P6 cooperation model serves as a strategic partnership with our customers that aims to secure mutual commitment and healthy collective growth for all companies involved. The P6 program is supported by a multi-year product alignment between UMC and the involved customers with a loading protection mechanism to ensure that capacity maintains at healthy utilization rates. P6 will be equipped with 28nm tools that have the flexibility to produce smaller nodes down to 14nm, creating a straightforward migration path to accommodate customers’ future development roadmaps. Furthermore, the building structure for UMC’s Fab 12A P6 is already built, adding a significant time-to-market advantage versus building a new fab from scratch. We look forward to leveraging our No. 1 worldwide foundry market position in multiple areas such as 28nm OLED driver IC production so we may further strengthen UMC’s semiconductor industry position and capture new market opportunities down the road.”
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UMC Reports Plans to Expand Capacity at its 300mm Fab 12A P6
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UMC Reports Plans to Expand Capacity at its 300mm Fab 12A P6
