Japanese chipmaker Renesas Electronics has reopened a semiconductor fab in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan, nine years after it stopped work at the facility.
The plant, which is situated near Mount Fuji, previously produced semiconductors for personal computers. Originally opened in 2000 and then shut in October 2014, Renesas has added a new clean room and installed the latest production equipment.
According to a report from Nikkei Asia, the refurbishment cost the company approximately 90 billion yen ($587 million) and took a year to complete. In comparison, building a new fab from scratch would have cost the company hundreds of billions of yen and taken several years to construct.
The new facility is expected to double Renesas' output of power semiconductors, with production of next-generation silicon carbide chips expected from 2025.
“We are proud to announce a remarkable achievement of the Kofu Factory. After its closure in 2014, the Kofu Factory has gone through a transformation and emerged as a dedicated 300-mm wafer fab for power semiconductors, exactly a decade later,” said Hidetoshi Shibata, President and CEO of Renesas.
Renesas was founded in 2010 when NEC’s chip division merged with Renesas Technology, itself the product of a merger between Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric’s chip operations.
In February 2024, the company acquired printed circuit board (PCB) company Altium for $5.9 billion. Altium was the third multi-billion purchase for Renesas following its 2016 purchase of chipmaker Intersil for $3.2bn; 2018 acquisition of Integrated Device Technology for $6.7bn; and 2021 purchase of Dialog Semiconductor for $5.9bn.
