SE Daily Reports Samsung Electronics Postpones Production at New Texas Factory until 2025
According to the Seoul Economic Daily, Samsung Electronics Co. has decided to postpone its mass production plans for its new chip plant in Taylor, Texas. This delay could potentially hinder the Biden administration’s efforts to boost domestic semiconductor supplies.
Mass production of the future $17 billion plant would begin in 2025, the newspaper said, citing a speech by Choi Siyoung, president of Samsung’s foundry business, at an industry event in San Francisco.
Samsung previously said the plant would begin production in the second half of 2024, when it announced the investment in 2021. A spokesperson said the company could not confirm a timetable for mass production right now.
The report followed an earlier decision by Samsung’s larger rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to postpone production at its new Arizona plant until 2025 from next year because of a shortage of experienced construction workers and machine assembly technicians.
Any delay at U.S. sites operated by the world’s two leading contract chipmakers would be a setback to U.S. President Joe Biden’s grand plan to increase chip production on American soil to avoid future supply disruptions, such as a 2021 shortage that will cost companies hundreds of billions in revenue.
The revisions to TSMC and Samsung’s plans would mean their new factories, worth tens of billions of dollars, could not come online until after next year’s US presidential election.
US environmental permitting issues and the Biden administration’s slowness to deliver financial support have plagued domestic chip projects.
More than a year after Biden signed the Chips Act into law and promised $100 billion in support for new semiconductor factories in the United States, his administration has given just $35 million in aid to the American subsidiary of British aerospace company BAE Systems Plc.
