Matsushita to build $1.2 billion fab for consumer boom
Peter Clarke
12/23/2003 7:50 AM EST
LONDON -- The heating up of the chip market, and the potential recovery of the semiconductor equipment continued on Tuesday (December 23, 2003) when it was reported that Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., would spend 130 billion yen (about US$1.2 billion) on a 300-mm wafer fab.
Reports said the fab would be constructed, starting early in 2004, at a site in Uozu, Toyoma Prefecture, about 160 kilometers (about 100 miles) west of Tokyo, with a view to entering production late in 2005. The fab is said to have a floor space of about 50,000 square metres and capacity of about 10,000 300-mm diameter wafer starts per month.
The reports said the plant would be used to build system LSIs, the Japanese phrase for logic chips.
Matsushita, maker of Panasonic brand products, has decided to build the plant in anticipation of a boom in the sale of digital consumer electronics equipment, the reports said. |
