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Technology Stocks : Amkor Technology Inc (AMKR) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tech101 who wrote (689)	5/22/2000 7:24:00 AM
From: Jim Oravetz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1056

BW May 22, 2000--To keep pace with the explosive growth within the semiconductor industry, Amkor Technology, Inc., (Nasdaq: AMKR), already the world's largest provider of contract semiconductor packaging and test services, today detailed plans to expand its production and test facilities in the Republic of Korea and the Philippines. The projects will add more than 800,000 square feet of factory space by mid-2001. The expansion announcement comes as Amkor completes its $1.4 billion acquisition of Anam Semiconductor, Inc.'s three remaining packaging and test factories in Korea. With the acquisition, Amkor's offshore factories now occupy approximately 3.6 million square feet, split between 2.6 million square feet in Korea and one million square feet in the Philippines. Amkor President John Boruch said, "We are expanding our facilities to handle increasing customer demand and to accommodate the dramatic forecasted growth in new advanced packages. "We believe about 80 percent of new advanced packages are being outsourced, including system in package, vision technology and wireless applications. This expansion, along with the investments we have made in the development of advanced packaging technologies, puts us in a strong position to meet these demands," he said. Construction is underway on a 512,000 square foot building near Manila that will be called P4. The project will provide space for Amkor's expanding business in System in Package (SiP) modules, test and advanced packages. A 200,000 square foot addition to accommodate Amkor's growing test business has just been completed in the Philippines, freeing floor space in the existing factory for growth of new ball-grid array product lines. Amkor operates more than 500 IC testers in the Philippines and Korea, which constitutes one of the largest contract test operations in the world. Expansion of K4, the largest and newest of Amkor's four Korean plants, started this year and will continue for several years. The initial phase will improve the ratio of manufacturing to non-manufacturing space, improving the efficiency of the existing building. The design phase for a 20,000 square foot class-100, flip chip wafer bumping area also is underway. Facility completion is scheduled by the first quarter of 2001. Phase two of the K4 expansion will add 100,000 square feet of manufacturing space to accommodate growth through 2001. Amkor has enough property at the K4 site to add an additional 1.5 million square feet of manufacturing space adjacent to the existing buildings. "Much of our focus in this expansion is to improve the effective productivity of our manufacturing space to provide our customers the most value," said Mike O'Brien, Amkor's executive vice president for manufacturing operations and order fulfillment. "Typically, in semiconductor assembly and test factories, non-manufacturing space consumes a significant portion of the total factory space. Our new building design models have substantially higher levels of manufacturing space than in conventional construction." "Besides building additional space, Amkor is focused on improving production output per square foot in existing space," O'Brien said. "We are accomplishing this objective by installing more productive equipment, implementing new manufacturing concepts such as high-density lead-frame, and achieving much higher utilization rates through better planning tools."