Samsung will invest more than $18 billion over the next four years to expand its memory chip and smartphone businesses in South Korea.
The investment comes as part of the company’s plans to create upwards of 440,000 new jobs by 2021 across the two businesses.
The company, which is seen as the world leader in smartphone sales according to Gartner who ranked Samsung as the lead in Q1 2017, plans to spend money to help increase its lead at the top of the market.
Samsung will invest at least $18.6 billion to expand and upgrade its chip plants in the South Korean cities, Pyeongtaek and Hwaseong by 2021.
According to Samsung, its chip plant that opened in 2015 is now one of the largest semiconductor production lines in the world. The company plans to hold its position with the latest investments towards the upgrade.
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In a statement, Samsung said: “Our clients are having difficulty securing enough semiconductor chips due to growing global demand for high-tech gadgets.
“We plan to actively respond to those demands by making aggressive investments on our production lines at home and abroad.”
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The company has also shown an increase in memory chip sales over the years, as it accounted for over 40% of global memory chip sales in Q1 2017 and in April it saw the biggest quarterly net profit in more than three years.
In addition with the new expansion, Samsung announced that its new semiconductor fabrication line in Pyeongtaek has begun mass production and shipping its first product to customers.
This new facility will deliver strong focus on the development of Samsung’s fourth-gen V-NAND, boosting the capacity of the company’s memory chip products.
The company will also make investments in its Hwaseong site to upgrade the infrastructure such as Extreme Ultra Violet (EUV) equipment.
