TSMC to build 7 new plants in 2024: Company official

Taipei, May 23 (CNA) Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world's largest contract chip maker, will build seven new plants this year in a bid to boost its global competitiveness, a company official said on Thursday.

The seven plants -- three wafer plants and two packaging factories in Taiwan plus another two wafer plants overseas -- are being built or will be built to meet fast growing global demand for high-performance computing devices and smartphones, Huang Yuan-kuo (黃遠國), head of the FAB18 plant in Tainan, told a TSMC 2024 Taiwan Technology Symposium.

Due to robust demand, the production capacity of TSMC's three-nanometer process is expected to multiply three times this year compared to 2023, Huang said.

Meanwhile, TSMC is also expanding its production capacity of specialty technology. The proportion of specialty technology relative to all mature processes is predicted to increase to 67 percent in 2024 from 61 percent in 2020, he said.

In addition, TSMC's output of automotive platform solutions is estimated to register a compound annual growth rate of 50 percent from 2020 to 2024, he said.

Huang said two new wafer plants that have been undergoing construction in Hsinchu and Kaohsiung since 2022 will manufacture two-nanometer chips. Mass production in both plants is set to start in 2025.

Meanwhile, construction of an advanced packaging factory in Central Taiwan began last year. Another in Chiayi is slated to start later this year and begin mass production of Chip on Wafer on Substrate (CoWoS) and Small Outline Integrated Circuit (SoIC) technologies in 2026.