Mitsui Chemicals is making additional investments in its Kaohsiung plant in Taiwan, and is moving to outpace South Korea and China, which have recently begun to invest in semiconductor materials in earnest.

Mitsui Chemicals announced on the 8th that it will invest 10 billion yen to increase production of special resin tapes for semiconductor manufacturing processes in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

The new plant is scheduled to begin construction in August 2021 and be operational in 2023, more than doubling the company's production capacity in Taiwan to 7.6 million square meters per year.

Special resin tape for semiconductors functions to prevent damage or contamination by attaching it to the circuit surface on the front side during the polishing process of the back side of the semiconductor substrate.

Mitsui Chemicals currently produces this special resin at its plants in Nagoya and Taiwan, and according to Mitsui Chemicals, it has the world's largest market share in this field, at about 40%.

Production began in Taiwan in 2020, with an existing production capacity of 3.8 million square meters.

Production system in a base near major customer factories in Taiwan The policy is to maintain and flexibly respond to demand.

The reason Mitsui Chemicals started operating a factory in Taiwan in 2020 is interpreted as responding to domestic demand in Taiwan, where TSMC, the world's largest foundry company, is located, and as a strategy to diversify production bases for exports to Korea due to regulatory evasion due to Japan's export regulations on Korea.

Experts believe that the purpose of this is to fend off China, which has been unable to smoothly obtain overseas semiconductor materials due to the US-China conflict, including Korea, and to actively pursue technology by domestically producing materials, and to secure technological leadership and strengthen market dominance.

Japanese companies are judging that the geopolitical risk of investing in China is high due to the semiconductor dispute between China and the United States, and companies such as Mitsubishi Chemical and Showa Denko Materials, which have high global market shares in the field of advanced semiconductor materials, are advancing into Taiwan one after another.

Especially in the case of advanced materials for semiconductors, once a market is secured, it is difficult for new companies to enter the market, so Japanese advanced materials companies with a technological advantage in the current situation are further accelerating their market dominance.

In addition to special resins for semiconductors, Japan accounts for half of the global market for semiconductor resists, and Japan also has a considerably high market share for special gases for semiconductor manufacturing.

Meanwhile, domestic companies are also quickly moving into technology development to respond to Japan's dominance of the materials market.

Korea's SK Materials is actively engaged in mass production of high-purity hydrogen fluoride and OLED materials such as photoresists and blue dopants.

Solbrain also doubled its liquid hydrogen fluoride production capacity, and Hansol Chemical also successfully commercialized TDMAS, which is used in the formation of semiconductor thin films, by receiving performance certification.