ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging service provider, yesterday said it plans to spend NT$5.26 billion (US$162.15 million) acquiring a manufacturing facility from an affiliate as part of its latest efforts to expand advanced packaging capacity.
ASE is to acquire a fab, named K18, in Kaohsiung’s Nanzih District (楠梓) from Hung Ching Development and Construction Co (宏璟建設), ASE chief financial officer Joseph Tung (董宏思) told an online media briefing yesterday.
Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (日月光半導體), a major subsidiary of ASE, jointly built the fab with Hung Ching. Advanced Semiconductor owns a 25 percent share in the fab.
Photo: CNA
Advanced Semiconductor also signed a cooperative development contract with Hung Ching in June 2020 to build the K13 plant, which was renamed the K18 plant.
“To accommodate the future operational growth of Advanced Semiconductor’s Kaohsiung plant, Advanced Semiconductor intends to exercise its right of first refusal to purchase the K18 plant from Hung Ching to meet the needs of expanding advanced production capacity,” Tung said.
ASE plans to add bumping and flip-chip packaging capacity at the K18 fab, Tung said.
Similarly, ASE in June said that it would jointly build a new plant, called K28, in Kaohsiung in cooperation with Hung Ching.
The capacity expansion aims to cope with growing demand for advanced packaging services used in artificial intelligence (AI) chips and high-performance computing (HPC) chips.
The fab is expected to start operations in the fourth quarter of 2026.
ASE has also expanded its advanced testing and packaging capacity overseas.
The company last week said it plans to buy 16 hectares of land in Kyushu, Japan, for about NT$701 million in preparation for building an advanced testing and packaging plant there.
ASE last month launched its second testing facility in San Jose, California, to expand advanced chip testing capacity such as burn-in testing to satisfy customers’ rising engineering needs for emerging semiconductor applications such as AI and HPC.
ISE Labs, fully owned by ASE, has spent about US$500 million on the company’s US labs and hired more than 200 Taiwanese employees.
Separately, ASE yesterday posted 6.7 percent annual growth in revenue for last month, rising from NT$48.35 billion to NT$51.6 billion and hitting the highest level since December last year.
On a monthly basis, revenue expanded 10 percent from NT$46.93 billion, a company filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange showed.
During the first seven months, ASE has accumulated NT$324.64 billion in revenue, increasing 2.89 percent from NT$315.52 billion for the same period last year.
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