To all, FYI,
Losses Force Siemens To Close
U.K. DRAM Fab
(07/31/98; 12:23 p.m. ET)
By Jack Robertson, Electronic Buyers' News
Siemens AG Semiconductor Group, based in Munich,
Germany, will close its U.K. dynamic RAM (DRAM)
fab in North Tyneside in the wake of its $560 million
chip operations loss so far this fiscal year, company
officials disclosed in London Friday.
Siemens will start phasing out production in September
and shutter the fab by the end of the year. Although
helping Siemens lower its semiconductor losses, the
closing of the U.K. fab, which had only 3,000 wafer
starts a week, isn't expected to have much impact on
the global DRAM oversupply.
Hans-Peter Betta, Siemens Semiconductor vice
president of international projects, said the Germany
chip maker has unsuccessful in trying to find a buyer for
the British fab. Earlier, Siemens tried to ease the burden
of the U.K. fab by arranging to sell 50 percent of the
DRAM output to Mosel-Vitelic of Taiwan, also a
partner in a separate DRAM fab in the Asian country.
North Tyneside was producing 16-megabit DRAM
devices, but was in the process of qualifying 64-megabit
lines. With the next-generation memory chip also in
global oversupply, Siemens elected to concentrate
production of that memory chip at its three remaining
advanced fabs in Dresden, Germany, White Oak
Semiconductor near Richmond, Va., and with
Mosel-Vitelic in Taiwan. Siemens and British authorities
have set up a task force to try to find other uses for the
U.K. fab.
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