South Korea’s Anam Group has agreed with Texas Instruments Inc on a joint venture for domestic production of 8 semiconductor wafers. Anam Group’s flagship company is semiconductor assembler Anam Industrial Co Ltd and the group plans to invest $3bn by the end of 2002 in the project with the US company providing manufacturing technology. Under the joint venture, a new company will be established devoted to non memory manufacturing using an advanced 0.35-micron logic process. Anam will allocate up to 70% of the output for Texas Instruments; export negotiations for the remainder are already in the final stages. Annual exports from the venture are estimated at more than $600m from 1998 and about $2bn from 2004.
