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Damage at Renesas' Naka factory is worse than thought
The fire that hit Renesas' N3 building at its Naka manufacturing facility, located on the Ibaraki prefecture, reportedly caused more damaged than initially thought.
In the company’s official update on the fire, Renesas said that the fire had damaged 11 pieces of production equipment. However, the Nikkei reports that the number of damaged machines is now believed to be closer to 17. A company spokesperson would not comment on the information, a report from Reuters states.
As previously reported by Evertiq, on March 19, 202 part of the N3 building – which houses a 300mm line – of Renesas Naka factory caught fire. The fire damaged 600 square metre area, which is around 5% of the 12’000 square metre clean room. In a statement the company said that it was expecting to resume production again within a month. However, analyst firm TrendForce expects the immediate task of restoring the cleanroom and installing new equipment to take much longer than that.
The report from Nikkei states that just replacing the damaged equipment could take several months to complete. Which will only add to the already strained global semiconductor supply. And as pointed out by Reuters, Renesas is one of the largest MSU suppliers at the moment – accounting for 30% – and two thirds of the chips produced at the damaged facility are for the automotive industry.
