A magnitude-6.4 earthquake struck southern Taiwan early yesterday morning, prompting staff evacuations at some production lines, which could cause disruptions in shipments of flat panels.
“Utility supplies were normal and there were no reports of casualties or damage, but production of some equipment was suspended temporarily,” the administration office of Southern Taiwan Science Park said in a statement yesterday.
“Following standard safety procedures, workers were immediately evacuated after the earthquake,” it said.
PHOTO: REUTERS/NATIONAL AIRBORNE SERVICE CORPS
The administration is in charge of Tainan Science Park and Kaohsiung Science Park — where 100-plus production lines, including solar cell maker Motech Industries Inc (茂迪), panel maker Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子) and chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — are located.
The intensity of the quake at Tainan Science Park was 5 on the Richter Scale, while that at Kaohsiung Science Park was 4, the statement said.
“Most of Chi Mei’s production lines have resumed operations,” Chi Mei spokesman Eddie Chen (陳彥松) said by telephone. “Some still need parts or adjustments and we’ll have to clean up the mess.”
PHOTO: CNA
AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), the nation’s largest manufacturer of liquid-crystal-display (LCD) panels, suffered “no significant impact” on its finances and operations, the company said in a stock exchange filing.
However, global LCD supply could be disrupted, Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst Frank Lee said.
Nearly all of Chi Mei’s fabs were affected, although the severity remains unclear, Lee wrote in a note to clients, quoting initial company feedback.
“We could see a pretty significant disruption to the overall LCD supply chain” during the second and third quarters, he wrote.
Meanwhile in Tainan County, firefighters were called in when a fire started in an automated storage warehouse at an Everest Textiles plant in Shanshang Township (山上) following the quake.
United Microelectronics Corp (聯電), the world’s second-largest custom-chipmaker, suffered damage estimated at NT$55 million (US$1.7 million), as production equipment crashed and some tools sustained minor damage, chief financial officer Liu Chi-tung (劉啟東) told Central News Agency.
Production at its 12-inch factory at Tainan Science Park will be delayed by one day and its factory in Singapore will help meet shipment demand, he said.
TSMC estimated losses would be the equivalent of one-and-a-half days of production.
“Assessment reports show that the earthquake had a minimal impact at the Hsinchu fabs. While fabs in Tainan were more seriously affected, they have gradually resumed production,” the world’s largest custom-chip maker said in a statement on its Web site.
Motech Industries and E-Tone Solar Tech Co Ltd (益通光能) said the earthquake would not have a major impact on shipments.
As solar cell production is not as sophisticated as that for panels and chips, employee evacuations and equipment shutdown didn’t hurt as much, they said.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now
RSS