Samsung has put into operation the world’s biggest semiconductor plant in South Korea. The electronics giant has recently announced that its brand new semiconductor fabrication facilities located in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province has started mass producing as well as shipping its initial products to its customers on July 4. This new manufacturing facility will concentrate on producing Samsung’s fourth-generation 64-layer 3D NAND flash storage, boosting the company’s position as the number one producer of this cutting-edge flash memory in the world. Samsung started constructing this manufacturing facility in May 2015, and it took two years of continuous work before the plant was completed. The whole facility has a total area of 2.83 million square meters and the total area reserved for its production line is about 790,000 square meters. This plant is just a part of a cluster of the largest semiconductor manufacturing facility of Samsung Electronics that is located in Hwaseong and Giheung.
Mr. Oh-Hyun Kwon, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Samsung Electronics, addressed the company’s stakeholders as soon as Samsung’s newest manufacturing plant was commissioned. He said that the success of this plant will depend on the dedication and support of their partners, their customers and their employees. He added that this new facility represents a new chapter in the company’s semiconductor operations. While the company has already invested a big sum of money in this project, the electronics giant announced that it is still investing in other manufacturing facilities in South Korea. The company revealed that it has already invested 15.6 trillion won ($13.5 billion) so far and will increase this amount to 14.4 trillion won ($12.5 billion) until 2021. It has also put in six trillion won to run extreme UV lithography equipment in the Hwaseong Campus.
The recent emerging IT trends such as artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and big data and automotive technologies might have spurred the demand for next-generation electronic components. Samsung must have been responding to this increase in demand by investing in new and bigger semiconductor manufacturing facilities. Currently, Samsung Electronics and Samsung Display are boosting the capacities of their manufacturing facilities even more by investing over 37 trillion won ($32 billion) in all of its facilities, not just in South Korea but all over the world.