[서울=뉴스핌] Reporter Kim Sun-yeop = Samsung Electronics dispatches technical staff to a semiconductor plant in Austin, Texas, which was stopped by a record cold wave in the United States.
It is known that the workforce of the set-up to restart the factory with dozens of people is mainly composed of the workforce.
On the 18th, Samsung Electronics announced on the 18th that it will dispatch employees of the company and technical staff from partners to the Austin semiconductor plant during this week.
They plan to board a flight to the US as soon as the new coronavirus infection (Corona 19) test and pre-training are completed.
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| The blackout in the US state of Texas. [뉴욕타임스 그래픽 캡처] |
According to Samsung Electronics and local media, the Austin plant has stopped production from 4 pm (local time) on the 16th.
As the entire United States recently suffered a power shortage due to the extreme cold in the Arctic, the city-owned electricity company Austin Energy has ordered local conglomerates to shut down their factories.
Texas is also suffering from an unusual cold wave, with the temperature in Houston falling to -10 degrees Celsius, the lowest in decades.
In particular, Texas is using its own power grid to evade federal regulations, so it is known that the electricity shortage is more serious due to this cold wave.
Accordingly, semiconductor companies such as Samsung Electronics, NXP semiconductor, and Infineon, which use a lot of electricity, have stopped operating due to this.
Samsung Electronics said, “We received a notice of power supply interruption in advance and stopped operating semiconductor wafer production facilities.”
The Austin plant is Samsung Electronics’ only US semiconductor producer. It was completed in 1998, and when it was first established, memory was the main focus, but from 2011, it has been producing 10 nano (nm) system semiconductors from 12-inch wafers.
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| Seoul Samsung Electronics Seocho Office / Reporter Kim Hak-sun |
As of the first half of 2020, it recorded 2 trillion won in sales, 3,000 employees, and accumulated investment of 17 billion dollars (about 18.700 billion won).
There were also observations that Samsung Electronics will build an additional factory in October last year when it purchased a site near the Austin factory.
A judge from Fort Band County, located on the outskirts of Houston, Texas, recently made a hot spot by writing a hand letter to Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Kim Ki-nam, who oversees the semiconductor business of Samsung Electronics, requesting the establishment of a semiconductor factory.
Samsung Electronics urgently recruiting technical staff and dispatching them to the Austin plant is interpreted as a measure to minimize the enormous damage caused by the disruption of the plant line and to stably restart.
An official from Samsung Electronics said, “It is difficult to estimate the extent of the damage because it is not yet known when the factory can be restarted.”