Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) has received government grants to build a new NT$300 billion (US$10.17 billion) fab after a nine-month deferral primarily due to red tape, as well as shortages of labor and raw materials.
The chipmaker yesterday sent media an invitation to attend a groundbreaking ceremony for the 12-inch fab on June 23.
Nanya Technology expects the fab, to be built in New Taipei City’s Taishan District (泰山), to start commercial operations in 2025.
Photo courtesy of Nanya Technologies Corp
It had expected the fab to start operations in 2024 with a monthly capacity of 15,000 wafers.
The new factory would help Nanya Technology solve capacity bottlenecks, it said.
The chipmaker expects production this year to be little changed for a second year, after a 35 percent year-on-year expansion in 2020.
With the introduction of more advanced technologies, the new fab would help it broaden its product portfolio and expand its customer base, the company said when it unveiled the plans in April last year.
The firm yesterday said that it plans to ramp up production of its first-generation 10-nanometer process technology in the second half of this year, allowing it to offer an 8-gigabyte DDR4 DRAM, among other memory chips.
A second chip, a DDR5 DRAM, is entering pilot production using 10-nanometer technology, Nanya Technology chairman Wu Chia-chau (吳嘉昭) told the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting yesterday.
The 10-nanometer chips are expected to account for 10 percent of total output by the end of this year at the earliest, it said.
The company currently uses mostly 20-nanometer technology to make DRAM chips.
Cloud-based data centers are leading the uptrend in DRAM chip demand, while rising 5G smartphone penetration is also boosting consumption, Wu said, adding that commercial and gaming notebooks are also growth drivers.
However, rising inflation worldwide, geopolitical tensions and supply constraints for key components are dampening demand for consumer laptops and handsets, he added.
The firm’s shareholders at the meeting approved a cash dividend of NT$3.7 per common share, which represents about a 50 percent payout ratio compared with last year’s earnings per share of NT$7.4.
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