Yageo Corp (國巨), the nation’s largest passive components supplier, on Saturday broke ground for a new plant in Kaohsiung that is expected to begin commercial production in 2022.
Yageo chairman Pierre Chen (陳泰銘) told the groundbreaking ceremony that it would be the company’s first new plant in the city in 15 years as it embarks on a plan to move its high-end technology production back home from overseas.
The plant, which is expected to be completed in August 2022, would produce passive components, such as chip resistors, inductors and multi-layer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs), starting in October that year, Yageo said.
Photo: CNA
The plant is being built at a cost of NT$5 billion (US$173.33 million), with an additional NT$13 billion to NT$15 billion allocated for equipment to produce advanced MLCCs, and is expected to create 3,000 new jobs, the company said.
The facility would have 10 stories with a floor area of 85,800m2, about 1.3 times the size of Yageo’s two other MLCC factories in Kaohsiung.
When the plant starts operation, 60 percent of Yageo’s total MLCC production would be in Taiwan, Chen said.
The production lines in Taiwan are to manufacture specialty and high-end MLCCs for use in the fields of automotive electronics, medical care, aviation, 5G and the Internet of Things, among others, he said.
With three plants in operation in Taiwan, Yageo’s MLCC production capacity would increase from 60 billion to 100 billion units per month, cementing its position as a leading global MLCC supplier, Chen said.
Yageo would also boost its development of high-technology through expansion, he said, citing the company’s acquisition earlier this year of US companies Kemet Corp and Pulse Electronics Corp for US$1.64 billion and US$740 million respectively.
Yageo would continue to invest in Kaohsiung as part of its plan to make Taiwan its manufacturing hub over the next five years, Chen said.
The company said it has teamed up with National Cheng Kung University in Tainan to establish a research and development center, where it would set up an academy to foster talent for the development of passive components.
Yageo has invested at least NT$50 million in the center, which has two research compounds, one in Kaohsiung and the other at the university.
Yageo is the largest maker of chip resistors and tantalum capacitors, but only 25 percent of its employees are in Taiwan, while 50 percent of its overseas workers are in China.
With the speed cryptocurrency is emerging as the millennial generation’s alternative asset of choice in India, it is hard to imagine that just two years ago a couple of blockchain pioneers were briefly in police custody. Sathvik Vishwanath and Harish BV, cofounders of a then five-year-old start-up, were arrested in late 2018. No, they had not pulled off a shady initial coin offering. Their “crime” was that they put up a kiosk in a mall in Bangalore where customers could swap bitcoin, ether or ripple for cash or vice versa. That was the whole point of unocoin, their crypto token exchange.
A Chinese factory owned by South Korean semiconductor giant SK Hynix Inc yesterday halted operations after a plant worker was found to have an asymptomatic infection of COVID-19, Xinhua news agency reported. The South Korean worker based at the plant in Chongqing since February had departed on Thursday for South Korea, Xinhua reported. He was tested at Incheon Airport in Seoul and confirmed positive for COVID-19 on Saturday, it reported. All factory staff as well as staff and recent guests at the hotel where the worker lived have been isolated and given nucleic acid tests, the agency said. “We’re cooperating with the local government
FIVE NEW FABS: An acquisition of Siltronic would boost GlobalWafers’ market share from 17 to 30 percent, easily surpassing Japanese rival Sumco’s 25 percent GlobalWafers Inc (環球晶圓) yesterday said it is in final talks to acquire Germany-based Siltronic AG in a 3.75 billion euro (US$4.5 billion) deal, which might help it compete with its closest rival Sumco Corp of Japan. The acquisition would be the fifth for GlobalWafers since 2008, as it has grown to become the world’s No. 3 supplier of silicon wafers through such deals. GlobalWafers, which has a 17 percent market share, would see its market position greatly elevated to 30 percent when combined with Siltronic’s 13 percent, according to a presentation Siltronic gave to its investors at a quarterly conference in August. Sumco
A year of crisis for the lira has kept people in Turkey buying gold at a record pace. Now the appetite for more bullion risks becoming a drag on the currency just as a rally struggles to regain momentum. In the two weeks after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan cleared out the leadership ranks blamed for failing to stabilize the lira and draining reserves, Turkish retail investors and firms added US$2.2 billion to their gold holdings, taking them to US$36.4 billion, or almost triple the total last year, Turkish central bank data showed. People are not relenting in their zeal to own
RSS