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Flash Partners to increase Fab3 capacity and capital equipment spending |
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Feb 09, 2006 at 11:13 AM |
 Flash Partners, the Joint Venture manufacturing operation
between Toshiba and SanDisk have announced increased spending on
capital equipment for 2006 to increase the ramp rate of its 300mm
facility, Fab3 in Yokkaichi, Japan.
SanDisk Corporation will be investing $500 million US dollars in Fab3
over the next 12 months to keep pace with NAND Flash demand. The new
300mm fab recently started ramping and currently has an estimated
13,000wspm (wafer starts per month) capacity. However, the company has
stated that its original plan to ramp Fab3 to 48,750wspm by March 2007
has been revised upwards to now reach 70,000wspm in the same time
frame. To reach the new target, SanDisk now estimates that its
investment in Fab 3 will reach $1.0 billion US dollars.
"We believe that Fab 3 is rapidly becoming one of the most competitive
sources of NAND Flash in the world. We expect this significant
acceleration in production output will further reduce our costs and
provide substantial new captive capacity to meet the anticipated growth
in demand from new markets such as mobile phones and MP3 players, and
enable us to better address geographies where we believe we have
attractive opportunities to expand our market presence," said Dr. Eli
Harari, president and chief executive officer of SanDisk Corporation.
Toshiba also announced that it will be increasing capital expenditure
in this financial year from around $2.0 billion US dollars to $2.4
billion which will be used to assist in the ramp of Fab3.
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