Tanaka Precious Metals will produce copper bonding wire in Taiwan

Tanaka Electronics Taiwan Co., Ltd., the new company establishing a production center in Zhongli City in Taoyuan County of Taiwan, will have capital of TWD285 million (approx. 730 million yen), and will be Tanaka Denshi Kogyo's fourth wire production center worldwide, following on from Japan, Singapore and China (Hangzhou). In the Taiwanese market with rapidly increasing demand for copper wire, transactions with semiconductor manufacturers such as subcontractors in the semiconductor assembly process are increasing, and the company aims to ship 100 million meters of wire per month by 2014. With gold prices at a high level, there is a growing trend of using copper wire as a substitute for gold wire that has previously been widely used as bonding wire for connecting semiconductor integrated circuits and external electrodes. It is estimated that approximately 1 billion meters of bonding wire is produced per month worldwide. Copper wire already accounts for around 20 percent of all bonding wire at present, and as substitution of gold wire mainly in emerging economies in Asia began to accelerate in 2010, this proportion may increase to around 40 percent by 2013. Tanaka Denshi Kogyo has previously established production centers in China and Singapore to meet demand for copper wire. Until now, only product sales and technical support functions were established in Taiwan, and bonding wire manufactured in Japan and Singapore was provided to Taiwanese customers.