Mitsubishi Electric Corp has chosen Taiwan as the base for expanding its memory chip production joining forces with the major trading house Kanematsu Corp and local company Umax Data Systems Ltd, which will hold a 60% majority in the joint venture. The new company, Power Chip Semiconductor Ltd will be capitalised at $320m with Mitsubishi putting up 15% of the capital and Kanematsu 16%. The joint venture will build a plant in the suburbs of Taipei with investment of some $750m, putting it on the same scale as NEC Corp’s new plant in Scotland. The plant is expected to start production in the autumn of 1996 with monthly capacity of 15,000 8 wafers using 0.4 micron design rules. Mitsubishi says it hopes to expand chip sales by making them in Taiwan, a leading production site for personal computers and a major market for memory chips.
