Major semiconductor maker Renesas Electronics Corp. said it will be able to fully resume shipments from its fire-damaged Naka plant in Hitachinaka, Ibaraki Prefecture, around June or July.
The Naka plant is the company's main facility, and primarily manufactures automotive semiconductors. Automakers will likely have to reduce production from late April, as a result of the disruption in supply.
The fire started in the early hours of March 19 in a facility called the "N3 building," one of the two manufacturing facilities at the plant. The fire burned around 600 square meters, or almost 5% of the building's clean room area, where the blaze started. The cause of the fire is not yet known.
Renesas announced March 21 that 11 out of about 600 production machines at the plant had been damaged by the fire. Another 12 machines were later found to have been damaged as well, meaning a total of 23 are currently not functioning.
The machines were damaged by soot from the smoke, and by corrosion stemming from chlorine gas generated by the fire, according to the company.
With the support of automakers and others, reconstruction of the plant is underway and it is now expected to be able to resume production within one month, as the company planned.
The damaged machines will be replaced from April. However, even if production restarts in late April, when the current one-month stock is expected to run out, it will take time to resume product shipments. Therefore, no shipments are expected from the plant for nearly one month after production is resumed.
Since the replacement of machines will be completed in June or later, it likely will take three to four months to fully resume shipments.
Of the semiconductors produced at the fire-hit N3 building, two-thirds were automotive semiconductors and the rest were for communication devices and other products. Renesas intends to avoid reducing production as much as possible by having other plants manufacture products on behalf of the damaged Naka plant. However, the impact is likely to be felt from late April when the current stock runs out.
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