Sony to invest about 10 billion yen in a new semiconductor plant in Thailand
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Update time : 2022-11-15 12:43:44
Sony will build a new semiconductor plant in Thailand to produce image sensors for automobiles, shifting labor-intensive work from Japan to Thailand and controlling production costs by spreading its production base around the world, while also creating a semiconductor supply chain capable of responding to emergencies, according to a Nikkei News report.
Sony will invest about 10 billion yen (about $724 million) to build a new building at its production site in central Thailand, according to the report. Work is already underway, and the plant will begin operations in the fiscal year ending March 2025.
The new plant will be responsible for manufacturing a new image sensor, but unlike the common IMX766 Exmor, the new line will focus on automotive chips designed to identify pedestrians and obstacles for self-driving cars.
Once completed, Sony's production scale in Thailand will directly increase to 170% of the original, and the company will also employ 2,000 people to work in the plant.
Nikkei notes that Sony's front-end process on wafers, a key component of semiconductors, will be done in Japan, while the Thai plant will only be responsible for the back-end processing, making wafers into thin chips, with the final product made for export worldwide.
We understand that Sony currently handles most of the front-end and back-end processes for automotive sensors at its Japanese plant, and the company now appears to be planning to focus its Japanese efforts on front-end processing and let its Thai operations take over the rest.
