onsemi to invest $2 billion in Czech Republic for silicon carbide factory

TapTechNews June 20th news, after announcing last week that it would carry out a series of operational adjustments including laying off about 1000 people, onsemi announced that it will invest up to 2 billion US dollars (TapTechNews note: currently about 14.537 billion RMB yuan) in the Czech Republic to build a vertically integrated silicon carbide factory.

This investment will also become one of the largest private enterprise investments in the history of the Czech Republic.

The factory will have the full-process production capacity of silicon carbide chips from wafers to packaging to meet the needs of advanced power semiconductors in industries such as European electric vehicles, AI data centers, and renewable energy.

After the new vertically integrated silicon carbide factory is put into operation, it will bring more than 6 billion Czech koruna (about 1.877 billion RMB) to the Czech GDP every year.

onsemi has previously had a production base in Roznov in the Czech Republic, responsible for business such as silicon crystal growth, polishing and epitaxial wafer manufacturing of silicon/silicon carbide, and silicon chip manufacturing. At present, the monthly capacity exceeds 250,000 wafers, and can produce more than one billion power devices annually.

onsemi President and Chief Executive Officer Hassane El-Khoury said:

Our re-investment will establish a Central European supply chain to better meet the rapidly growing demand of customers for innovative technologies, thereby improving the energy efficiency of their applications.

Through close cooperation with the Czech government, this expansion project will also increase our production capacity of smart power semiconductors, which is crucial to helping ensure that the European Union can achieve the ambition of significantly reducing carbon emissions and environmental impact.