Msscorps Co (汎銓科技), which specializes in materials analysis for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and other semiconductor firms, yesterday said it plans to expand its capacity by 30 percent this year amid rising analysis demand for materials used in advanced technologies in Taiwan and Japan.
Strong demand for advanced semiconductor technologies helped back the company during an industry down cycle last year, Msscorps said.
To maintain its growth momentum, the company yesterday inaugurated a new plant at Tai Yuen Hi-Tech Industrial Park (台元科技園區) in Hsinchu County’s Jhubei City (竹北).
Photo: Grace Hung, Taipei Times
The new factory is to add 20 to 30 percent to its capacity in Taiwan, mostly for advanced technologies such as 2-nanometer equipment, the company said.
As new materials and new transistor architecture, dubbed gate-all-around, are adopted for the next generation of semiconductor technology, demand for materials analysis is on the rise, it said.
Msscorps two years ago ordered 30 pieces of equipment for NT$1.5 billion (US$48.37 million) and expects to receive about half of the machines this year, company chairman Gino Leou (柳紀綸) told a news conference.
The deliveries were delayed last year due to labor shortages and insufficient plant space, Leou said.
Msscorps aims to make Taiwan its biggest operational hub by capacity, contributing 75 percent of the company’s total capacity, following installation of the new equipment, he said.
As countries are racing to build local supply of advanced chips, Msscorps is stepping up its overseas deployment this year, he said.
The company plans to begin operations at a new factory near Tokyo in the third quarter of this year after three years of evaluations, Leou said, adding that the Japanese plant is expected to contribute 5 to 6 percent of the firm’s total capacity in its first year.
In China, Msscorps is also expanding capacity at an annual pace of about 50 percent as Chinese semiconductor firms proceed with aggressive technology advancement to overcome chip restrictions imposed by the US, he said.
Msscorps hopes to translate most of the capacity expansion into a new revenue stream this year, hopefully boosting revenue growth to outpace last year’s momentum, he said.
Apart from robust demand for advanced technologies, a recovery in semiconductor demand is also expected to fuel growth in the second half of this year, he said.
In the first 11 months of last year, revenue expanded 10.88 percent year-on-year to NT$1.72 billion.
About 85 percent of the company’s revenue came from materials analysis services, while failure analysis services accounted for 15 percent, the company said.
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