Bucking the dismal trend for semiconductor manufacturing plant closures in the UK, NEC Corp has earmarked 350m pounds ($561m) for further development of its Livingston, Scotland plant this year. While the future of LG Semiconductor’s Newport plant hangs in the balance and confusion reigns about the status of Siemens’ North Tyneside 1.1bn pound ($1.8bn) chip venture, NEC says its Livingston plant is now regarded as one of its four core fabrication plants.
According to Aston Bridgeman, a spokesperson from NEC’s Tokyo headquarters, the 350m pounds will be spent on upgrading the plant’s equipment in preparation for NEC’s move to producing direct Rambus 128Mb dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips in the fourth quarter this year. Bridgeman said that the new chips will be produced using either a 0.22 micron or 0.2 micron process. Livingston’s current production of 64Mb synchronous DRAMs will also be ramped up this year. The plant is also producing the Emma set-top box ASICs which was developed by NEC’s English multimedia R&D center. Bridgeman speculated that the reason NEC had succeeded where other major manufacturers had failed was down to the company’s integrated global manufacturing system. Bridgeman said that NEC remained committed to maintaining a technologically up-to-date chip manufacturing plant in European plant. Despite the recent unexpected first quarter downturn in DRAM sales, NEC says it is cautiously optimistic about chip sales prospects for the remainder of the year..
A very different picture emerges from LG Semiconductor about the prospects for its plant in Newport, Wales. Geriant Evans, director of human resources for the Welsh facility, admitted that its future still hangs in the balance. Evans said that the merger talks between LG’s South Korean parent company and the semiconductor arm of Hyundai Electronics are in their final stages but said that it was difficult to speculate on the future of the plant. Construction work on the fab has been completed but Evans said as yet very little equipment has been installed.
Meanwhile, Siemens claimed no knowledge of reports in the UK press that Chinese firm, Beijing International Switching Systems Corp, was negotiating with the UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) about a rescue bid for Siemens’ ill-fated Tyneside plant. Director of communications, Katja Schlendorf said that there were no talks over the plant currently underway. The facility, which had manufactured 64Mb DRAMs and the outmoded 16Mb variety, will be mothballed by June and equipment is currently being removed, Schlendorf said.
