Siemens to close U.K. fab after DRAM losses
MUNICH -- Siemens AG's Semiconductor Group will close its U.K. DRAM fab in North Tyneside, England, in the wake of its $560 million chip-operations loss so far this fiscal year, company officials disclosed in London today.
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 German chip maker has been 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% 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-megbit DRAMs, but was in the process of qualifying 64-Mb lines. With the next-generation memory chip also in global oversupply, Siemens elected to concentrate production of that 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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