Japanese car chip maker halts production for a month after factory fire
Japanese chip manufacturer Renesas has suffered a fire at its Naka Factory, near the city of Hitachinaka. As a result, production will stop for a month. According to the CEO, this will have a significant impact on deliveries to his customers, especially the automotive sector.
In an update, the company said there were no casualties and no damage to the building, but damage to the water supply, air conditioning and certain production equipment. According to Renesas, the fire was caused by overvoltage, with certain equipment catching fire because the exterior was not able to withstand the heat. How this could have happened is currently being investigated.
The burnt area covers 600 square meters, which makes up 5 percent of the clean room portion of the first floor of this N3 building. The company says two percent of its production equipment was burned. The interior needs to be cleaned here and some equipment also needs to be replaced. As a result, production here has been stopped.
Production is expected to resume in a month. 300mm wafers were produced in this N3 building. The 200mm wafer production line in another building and wafer testing were not affected by the fire. Renesas says that about two-thirds of the products manufactured in the N3 building can also be made elsewhere by the company, but current global chip shortages mean it is not possible to start right away. This is due to a lack of spare capacity, because as much capacity as possible is already being deployed.
Hidetoshi Shibata, the company’s CEO, said in a statement that the fire could result in a significant reduction in the number of chips shipped to its customers, the Japan Times reported. According to him, it could have a major impact on Renesas’ ability to supply chips to car manufacturers. According to the Financial Times, Shibata said that two-thirds of the affected production is actually chips for the automotive sector. This sector has been suffering from global chip shortages for some time.
Renesas was founded in 2010 by the merger of NEC Electronics and Renesas Technology, a joint venture of Hitachi and Mitsubishi. The Japanese company makes microcontrollers, among other things, but is also a major supplier of chips for the automotive sector worldwide.