UMC Completes Consolidation of Joint Ventures
Company Strengthens Position as a World Leader in Foundry Services -- New Corporate Structure Already in Place
SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 10, 2000--UMC announced today that the consolidation of its Taiwan-based joint venture companies is complete.
United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), United Integrated Circuits Corporation (UICC), United Silicon Incorporated (USIC), United Semiconductor Corporation (USC) and UTEK Semiconductor Corporation (UTEK) (2337/TW) are now merged into one publicly-traded entity, United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) (2303/TW). Sales operations will change their name to UMC from UMC GROUP signifying the consolidation. The UMC affiliated company in Japan, NFI (Nippon Foundry Inc.), will operate within the new organizational structure of UMC, but will not be financially consolidated.
Peter Chang, CEO of Foundry Operations, will be responsible for overseeing all day-to-day management and operations of the company. Peter Chang noted, ''We have been preparing for this day for the last six months, and have essentially completed our organizational restructuring. Our customers have already started to enjoy the benefits of this merger.
''These benefits include a better service interface for customers with production at multiple UMC fabs, better synergies in our technology development efforts, faster process deployment between fabs, as well as across-the-board improvements in efficiency. We are sure that this consolidation will prove a winning strategy for our customers and shareholders.''
Jim Kupec, now in charge of Worldwide Marketing and Sales and President of UMC (USA) said, ''We have received overwhelmingly positive feedback from our customers around the world. Under the new corporate structure, we offer a single interface to customers in all of the UMC fabs. This will offer immediate benefits to critical services such as our internet-enabled customer support systems. The new UMC structure will allow us to further strengthen our market position, making us even more competitive in the key areas of technology leadership, service quality, capacity growth and cost-efficiency.''
In 2000, the consolidated UMC is expected to have capacity to produce 2.4 million wafers and expects capital expenditures of $2.4 billion. Two new 8-inch fabs will be ramping production in the first quarter, solidifying UMC's position as the world's leading foundry supplier of 8-inch wafer capacity.
To signify the consolidation, the company has launched a new logo. In addition, all UMC fabs have been renamed to reflect the single corporate structure. Under the new naming system, each fab name begins with a number indicating the wafer size it produces (5,6,8, or 12-inch). A letter that indicates the order in which the fab was constructed follows this number; for example, Fab 8B is an 8-inch fab and is the second 8-inch fab built by UMC.
New Names of UMC Fabs:
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Fab 5A ( formerly UTEK1) Fab 6A (formerly UMC2)
Clean Room Level: Class 10 Clean Room Level: 0.1um/Class 10
Process: 1.2um - 0.7um Process: 0.8um - 0.5um
Design Capacity: 35,000 Design Capacity: 48,000
wafers/month wafers/month
Location: Hsin-Chu Location: Hsin-Chu
Wafer Size: 5" Wafer Size: 6"
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Fab 8A (formerly UMC3) Fab 8B (formerly USC1)
Clean Room Level: 0.1um/Class 0.1 Clean Room Level: 0.1um/Class0.1
Process: 0.5um - 0.25um Process: 0.35um-0.18um
Design Capacity: 35,000 Design Capacity: 35,000
wafers/month wafers/month
Location: Hsin-Chu Location: Hsin-Chu
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Fab 8C (formerly USIC) Fab 8D (formerly USC2)
Clean Room Level: 0.1um/Class0.1 Clean Room Level: 0.1um/Class0.1
Process: 0.25um-0.15um Process: 0.13um
Design Capacity: 30,000 Design Capacity: 35,000
wafers/month wafers/month
Location: Hsin-Chu Location: Hsin-Chu
Production start: Q1 '00
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Fab 8E (formerly UTEK2) Fab 8F (formerly UMC 5)
Clean Room Level: 0.1um/Class0.1 Clean Room Level: 0.1um/Class0.1
Process: 0.5um - 0.25um Process: 0.13um
Design Capacity: 45,000 Design Capacity: 40,000
wafers/month wafers/month
Location: Hsin-Chu Location: Hsin-Chu
Production start: Q1 '00
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Fab 12A (formerly 2 inch fab) NFI (a UMC joint venture)
Design Capacity: 30,000 Design Capacity: 25,000
wafers/month wafers/month
Location: Tainan Location: Japan
Construction Complete: Q4 '00
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UMC, a world leading semiconductor foundry, with headquarters located in Taiwan's Hsinchu Science Park, has nine wafer fabs (including seven 8'' fabs) in operation. UMC also operates the only dedicated foundry in production in Japan, Nippon Foundry Inc. (NFI), and has formed a second joint-venture foundry company in Japan in cooperation with Hitachi to manufacture 12-inch wafers at a Japan-based facility.
UMC is a leader in foundry technology and expects capacity to reach 2.4 million wafers per year in 2000 with over half in advanced 0.18 and 0.25-micron technology. UMC is currently in volume production of 0.18-um technology and will offer copper-interconnect and 0.15-micron logic technology to its foundry customers in the first quarter of 2000.
The company has also started construction on a 12-inch facility in Taiwan that is expected to enter production by mid-year 2001 with a design capacity of 30,000 wafers per month. UMC has marketing and customer support offices located in the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands. UMC can be found on the web at umc.com.
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