Industrial contamination disrupts flash chip output at two Japan plants

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TOKYO (AFP): Operations at two Japanese factories producing flash memory chips have been disrupted by the contamination of industrial materials, chipmaker Kioxia said Thursday (Feb 10).

It comes as the tech industry grapples with a global semiconductor shortage that has hampered the manufacturing of numerous products from cars to gaming consoles.

Kioxia said it suspected "contamination of materials used in the manufacturing processes" at its plants leading to operations being partially suspended, without giving further details.

The company, a spin-off of Japanese conglomerate Toshiba, said it was working to restore full output at the factories in central and northern Japan as soon as possible.

Kioxia's US-based partner Western Digital also confirmed the disruption and estimated it would cause "a reduction of flash availability of at least 6.5 exabytes" at the plants, which are run by the two companies as a joint venture.

A unit of digital data, there are one billion gigabytes in an exabyte.

Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Ace Research Institute, said the disruption was more bad news for the industry.

"Flash memory prices will rise for sure, further adding fuel to the recent component price hike trend stemming from supply shortages," he told Bloomberg News.

A pandemic-fuelled surge in demand for home electronics that use semiconductors has throttled chip supplies -- a crisis deepened by a cold snap in the United States, a drought in Taiwan and a fire at Japanese manufacturer Renesas last year.

A number of firms have recently announced plans for new semiconductor plants as the chip squeeze continues. In November, Samsung said it will build a microchip factory in Texas, a $17 billion investment.

Taiwan's TSMC has said it will build a plant in Japan in partnership with Sony, while China's biggest chipmaker said in September that it would build a new factory in Shanghai.

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