UMC Partners with Customers for NT$100 Billion Capacity Expansion at its 300mm Fab 12A P6 in Tainan
April 28 2021 - 4:30AM
Business Wire
Innovative win-win collaboration model secures
long-term capacity for customers as global chip demand continues to
outpace supply
United Microelectronics Corporation (NYSE: UMC; TWSE: 2303)
("UMC"), a leading global semiconductor foundry, today announced
plans to expand capacity at its 300mm Fab 12A Phase 6 (P6) in
Taiwan’s Tainan Science Park through a collaboration model with
several of its leading global customers. Under this mutually
beneficial arrangement, these customers will make a deposit that
secures their long-term chip supply at P6 using pre-determined
pricing that will enable UMC to grow organically and meet its
long-term profitability and market relevance goals. The P6
expansion is scheduled for production in the second quarter of
2023, with total investment for the project earmarked at NT$100
billion. In addition to UMC’s previously announced 2021 CAPEX of
US$1.5 billion, the bulk of which is allocated towards equipment
for the company’s Fab 12A P5 site adjacent to P6, total UMC
investment in the Tainan Science Park will reach approximately
NT$150 billion over 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.”
UMC has operated in the Tainan Science Park since November 1999,
when Fab 12A was established as Taiwan's first 300mm fab. Fab 12A
is currently operating at a capacity of approximately 90K 300mm
wafers per month (wpm), with an additional 10K wpm being installed
at P5 starting in 2021. The P6 project will add 27.5K more wpm
production capability when fully equipped, effectively creating a
long-term earnings growth driver for the company. With UMC planning
to hire an additional 1000 employees to support this and other
areas of the company’s operations, UMC continues to fulfill its
commitment to be a global corporation that is deeply rooted in
Taiwan.
About UMC
UMC (NYSE: UMC, TWSE: 2303) is a leading global semiconductor
foundry. The company provides high quality IC production with a
focus on both logic and specialty technologies to serve every major
sector of the electronics industry. UMC’s comprehensive technology
and manufacturing solutions include logic/RF, embedded high
voltage, embedded flash, RFSOI/BCD and IATF-16949 automotive
manufacturing certification for all its manufacturing facilities.
UMC operates 12 fabs that are strategically located throughout Asia
with a maximum capacity of more than 750,000 8-inch equivalent
wafers per month. The company employs approximately 19,500 people
worldwide, with offices in Taiwan, China, United States, Europe,
Japan, Korea and Singapore. For more information, please visit:
http://www.umc.com.
Note from UMC Concerning Forward-Looking Statements
Some of the statements in the foregoing announcement are
forward-looking within the meaning of the U.S. Federal Securities
laws, including statements about introduction of new services and
technologies, future outsourcing, competition, wafer capacity,
business relationships and market conditions. Investors are
cautioned that actual events and results could differ materially
from these statements as a result of a variety of factors,
including conditions in the overall semiconductor market and
economy; acceptance and demand for products from UMC; and
technological and development risks. Further information regarding
these and other risks is included in UMC’s filings with the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission. UMC does not undertake any
obligation to update any forward-looking statement as a result of
new information, future events or otherwise, except as required
under applicable law.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210428005418/en/
Media Contact UMC Corporate Communications Richard Yu
+886-2-2658-9168 ext. 16951 richard_yu@umc.com
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