SilTerra, Malaysia's largest semiconductor wafer foundry, is investing $150 million in an expansion plan that will increase its annual capacity by 20%. The investment, sourced from both capital injections by shareholders and internally generated funds, will increase SilTerra's annual capacity from 8.3 million to 10 million mask layers. The additional capacity is expected to be ready for production by early 2023. According to Tan Sri Syed Zainal Abidin Syed Mohamed Tahir, Group Managing Director of DNeX, and also Executive Chairman of SilTerra, the investment is the shareholders' on-going commitment to equip the company with best-in-class manufacturing capabilities and expand the production capacity to achieve a better economy of scale, with lower manufacturing costs.
"The initiatives implemented thus far to transform SilTerra into a profitable and resilient technology company have yielded fruitful results. In the past six months, our de-bottlenecking and process improvements exercise have resulted in improved productivity and efficiency levels," he said.
"As a result, SilTerra is now a profitable entity and is well-poised to grow further in view of the continuous strong demand for semiconductors and prevailing capacity constraints within the industry due to the high demand of electric vehicles, [IoT], data centers, and e-commerce. This demand is particularly relevant for the 200mm specialty foundries where SilTerra is in. Hence, it is prudent for us to continue our long-term investment programmes for SilTerra to cater to the rising demand,” he added. Moreover, he said the support from SilTerra’s customers is very strong.
"The recently inked long-term agreements ("LTAs") with ChipOne Technology (Beijing) and Taiwan-based ILI Technology will provide a stable business for SilTerra in case a market downturn happens. Apart from the business these LTAs will bring, SilTerra is committed to work with our customers to improve the technology cooperation to further strengthen and optimise the product and technology roadmap among the parties," said Tan Sri Syed Zainal Abidin Syed Mohamed Tahir.
"All in all, the execution of our business roadmap has been progressing well. Alongside the continual positive outlook of the semiconductor industry and our investment, we believe there is still ample room for SilTerra to deliver stronger results moving forward," he added.
SilTerra is a strategic investment of DNeX, and Beijing Integrated Circuit Advanced Manufacturing and High-End Equity Investment Fund Center ("CGP Fund").
SilTerra also introduced this month cavity silicon-on-insulator (C-SOI) technology for MEMS and photonics devices based on wafers produced and customized by Okmetic, a silicon wafer supplier based in Finland. C-SOI wafers are customized for SilTerra's needs and suitable for applications in piezosensor, micromirror, accelerometer, microphone, inertial MEMS, resonator, and microfluidic devices across such vertical markets as consumer electronics, medical, industrial and automotive for the frequency range of 500kHz or below. The technology can also be used to build sensors that use MEMS based actuation and photonics based sensing.
SilTerra has successfully integrated and qualified the MEMS and photonics process modular blocks on C-SOI substrates. With this technology, SilTerra can offer precise, high yield, and faster time-to-market MEMS and photonics devices fabrication to customers.
"We are pleased [to have] SilTerra as one of the early pure-play foundry adopters to introduce C-SOI based technology for MEMS and photonics devices, which will strengthen and broaden SilTerra's offerings in this market," said Tan Sri Syed Zainal Abidin Syed Mohamed Tahir.
"Moving forward, we will continue to invest and enhance our technical offerings to satisfy the market demand. This is all part of our commitment to turn SilTerra into a world-class specialty foundry player in terms of operational excellence and technology advancement," he said.
According to Tan Sri Syed Zainal Abidin Syed Mohamed Tahir, the demand for semiconductor chips will remain elevated this year, driven by the major technological shifts occurring around the globe such as the 5G network transition, Industry 4.0, rapid adoption of electric vehicles, and renewable energy.
Dagang NeXchange Berhad ("DNeX") is a global technology company operating in three business divisions: Technology, Energy, and IT. In Technology, the company is a leading semiconductor foundry, while in Energy, the company is focused on upstream exploration and production, as well as equipment supply and maintenance. The company is listed on the main market of Bursa Malaysia.
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