Winbond plans $10.92 billion memory fab in Taiwan

Winbond is one of the smaller memory makers, with a marketshare in the DRAM market of under 1 percent. This makes it the fifth largest DRAM maker, in a market that's dominated by names like Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix. The company operates in special niche markets, and is still making most of its memory chips on 38nm and 46nm nodes. It is the largest name in the NOR flash memory market though, but it's not a company we often talk about.

Thus it's quite surprising to see the firm investing NT$335 billion (US$10.92 billion) in a capacity expansion at the Southern Taiwan Science Park. This marks the largest investment by Winbond since 2004. The money will be used for the construction of a 300mm fab for DRAM and flash memory production. It's estimated to be ready in 2020 and will employ at least 2,500 workers.

Winbond chose Taiwan over Singapore for the fab, as the city government and the Ministry of Science and Technology last year located a piece of land and fast-tracked approval, Acting Kaohsiung Mayor Hsu Li-ming (???) said in the statement.

The extra capacity will help Winbond to increase its revenue growth. At the moment, the company is hindered by limited capacity as it's factory utilization rate is running close to 100 percent. Winbond expects to continue to run at full capacity until year-end.

Via: Taipei Times