SK Siltron to invest 1 tln won to pump up wafer production

SEOUL, March 16 (Yonhap) -- SK Siltron Co., a semiconductor material producer under South Korea's SK Group, said Wednesday it will build a new wafer production plant amid the global semiconductor shortage.

The company plans to spend nearly 1.05 trillion won (US$847.8 million) over the next three years to build a plant that can produce 300 mm silicon wafers in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province.

The construction on 42,716 square meters of land is expected to begin sometime in the first half of this year, with a goal to produce products in the first half of 2024.

"We aim to become the industry's leading provider of advanced wafers through technological innovations by working closely with global semiconductor companies," CEO Jang Yong-ho said.

SK Siltron is one of the world's major producers of wafers, a key part of the semiconductor process, and supplies products to Samsung Electronics Co. and SK hynix Inc. -- the world's two biggest memory chip makers.

In January, the U.S. Commerce Department cited lack of wafer production capacity as one of the reasons behind the global shortage of semiconductors.

"The primary bottleneck across the board appears to be wafer production capacity, which requires a longer-term solution," it said.

Against this backdrop, global wafer manufacturers have moved to increase production capacity, believing the shortage is feared to continue until 2026.

SK Siltron has been producing wafers at full capacity to meet rising demand in the past two years.

jaeyeon.woo@yna.co.kr
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