Invest KOREA

According to Yonhap News,

Dutch semiconductor equipment maker ASM will invest US$100 million to build a new production and research and development center in South Korea by 2025, a top executive said Tuesday.

The decision underscored ASM's commitment to expanding business in South Korea, the second largest semiconductor market with 19 percent of global industry sales as of 2021. South Korea is home to Samsung Electronics Co. and SK hynix Inc.

"The expansion is mainly targeted at research and development, because we need to do more but also we are going to increase our manufacturing so that the products that are developed here will be manufactured here in Korea," ASM CEO Benjamin Loh said in a news conference at a Seoul hotel, a day before the groundbreaking ceremony of its second facility in Hwaseong, about 55 kilometers south of Seoul.

The new Hwaseong facility will be used for production of equipment for atomic layer deposition, a key process in chip manufacturing, and research and development, like the current facility in the city. With the new one, ASM's R&D space in South Korea will grow by twofold and production space by threefold.

ASM also needs to work closely with South Korean companies, which are some of the most advanced in the world, as ALD, its key supply item, has to be used for advanced devices, such as DRAM, 3D-NAND and Logic devices, Loh said, noting the country also has a skilled workforce.

In particular, demand for plasma enhanced ALD is expected to increase over the next couple of years, and this is also the reason ASM decided to expand operation in South Korea, as it is the only country the company manufactures the product in, Loh added.

On the outlook of the chips industry, Loh said the semiconductor sector will have a positive long-term outlook thanks to its usage in different industries, such as communications, electric vehicles and artificial intelligence (AI).

Despite the current downturn, most analysts believe the value of semiconductors that will be sold will hit the $1 trillion mark by the end of this decade, a twofold increase compared with two or three years ago, according to Loh.

"There's more and more data that is going to be generated, which means that you need more and more storage memory chips," Loh said. "There's more and more computing that is required, which means you need more processes, which is logic chips."

The wafer fab equipment market is expected to decline in 2023 due to inventory corrections and waning global demand, but recover from 2024 and surpass the 2022 level in 2025 thanks to growth driven by secular trends of AI, 5G, electric vehicles and edge computing, Loh said, citing data from TechInsights, a semiconductor information platform.

nyway@yna.co.kr

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Source: Yonhap News (May 23, 2023)