[Exclusive] In 6 weeks... Samsung Austin plant normal operation
Samsung Electronics' Austin semiconductor plant, which had been shut down due to a record cold wave that struck Texas in the United States, cut off electricity and water supplies, and resumed normal operation after six weeks. It is expected to minimize the impact on sales, as it is more than 15 days ahead of the initial forecast.
According to the semiconductor industry on the 29th, it was confirmed that Samsung Electronics is currently operating the Austin plant normally. It has already begun partial operation from the beginning of this month and some production has resumed, and from the end of this month, it is known that the production volume is close to the level before the shutdown.
The Austin plant was shut down due to a power outage from the 16th of last month (local time). The power and water supply was restored in a few days, but the industry expected that restarting would be possible only after mid-April at an early date. In general, a semiconductor process takes at least several days to operate normally even if it is stopped for a few seconds. This is because, while checking the condition of wafers remaining in the equipment that has stopped, it is necessary to increase the quality while blocking the possibility of safety accidents for each process. Therefore, it was a public opinion that it would take more than two months to restart the Austin plant.
As the Austin plant resumes operation sooner than expected, the reduction in sales due to the shutdown will also be minimized. The Austin plant's sales last year amounted to 3.9 trillion won.
This means that the company generated sales of 10 billion won a day, and as the shutdown period increases, the amount of losses inevitably increases astronomically. For this reason, some analyzes have come out that the scale of the damage will reach 1 trillion won.
An industry official said, "Because it was a predicted power outage, we were able to minimize wafer damage through preliminary preparations, and thanks to that, we were able to resume production of finished products immediately after starting partial operation." "We will be able to make up for a significant part of the production disruption in the past," he said.
The official added, "On an annual basis, the scale of production disruption will not reach even a month's quantity."
Samsung Electronics has been concentrating its company-wide capabilities for quick restart after shutdown. Last month, a total of 300 people, including 60 employees and 240 employees of partner companies, were dispatched to the local area.
Samsung Electronics' Austin plant mainly produces power semiconductors (PMIC) and communication semiconductors for information technology (IT) devices through 14 nanometers (nm·1 nm is 1 billionth of a meter) and 28 nanometer processes. It also manufactures self-driving chips of the company.
Meanwhile, the NXP plant, a Dutch semiconductor manufacturer, located near Samsung Electronics' Austin plant, has resumed operation on the 11th in about a month.
At that time, NXP first started operation after equipment inspection, and announced that this shutdown will affect its sales in the second quarter of 100 million dollars (about 1132 billion won).
German semiconductor maker Infineon also recently resumed normal operation, and explained that although the aftermath of the shutdown will be reflected in short-term earnings, it will not have a significant impact on annual earnings.
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