By Kim Sung-jin
Staff Reporter


Samsung Electronics is forecast to set up a new $3.3 billion semiconductor plant in Austin, Texas.

``It is true that Austin has a good business environment for semiconductor production in areas such as chip related industries, highly educated manpower and other resources,’’ said an executive of the world’s biggest memory semiconductor maker.

``It seems the opinion is leaning towards Austin, but its not finalized yet. We will soon decide where in the U.S our new chip plant will be built and then make public the construction plan,’’ he added.

Samsung Electronics vice chairman Yun Jong-yong, at the parliamentary audit last Wednesday, said that his company has tentatively decided to build an additional top-of-the-line 12-inch (300-millimeter) wafer semiconductor fab in the U.S. starting early next year.

However, Yun did not elaborate on the specific investment destination.

The proposed new microchip plant, from which Samsung plans to churn out NAND flash memory chips among others, will go into operation by the end of 2006.

A semiconductor industry insider said that he is quite confident that Samsung Electronics will probably build its new semiconductor plant in Austin considering the combined benefit of creating a small cluster with a previous production facility.

For instance, he said, Samsung can relocate part of its workforce of its existing 8-inch wafer Austin plant to the new plant, significantly reducing its initial labor training cost while rapidly improving productivity.

Samsung Electronics, the world’s leading chipmaker only behind Intel Corp. of the U.S., produces dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips in its first and the only offshore semiconductor plant in Austin. The chipmaker built the Austin plant in 1998.

The possibility of Samsung’s additional investment in Austin is heightened by chairman Lee Kun-hee’s protracted sojourn in the U.S. Local semiconductor experts speculate that although chairman Lee has left for the U.S. for a medical checkup, he is staying in the U.S. for other reasons and could be orchestrating the investment deal in Austin.

In addition, the Austin municipal government is soliciting Samsung to make its proposed additional semiconductor investment in the city.

Austin is reportedly examining providing $58.5 million worth of incentives to Samsung if the Korean semiconductor giant invests $3 billion in setting up the new flash memory production lines in the city. The proposed plant would be the largest overseas investment ever made by a Korean company.

The Samsung Electronics executive said the chipmaker would probably clinch the deal with the U.S. city as early as next month.

sjkim@koreatimes.co.kr