 With Fab 4, a new mega-scale 300mm fab just started construction in Yokkaichi, Japan a month ago, Toshiba's Corporate Vice President, Shozo Saito has stated that the company is looking at overseas locations for the next 300mm NAND Flash fab, according to a news report from Reuters.
Toshiba and Elpida have been rumored to be investigating overseas locations for some time, attracted to lower operating costs and significant incentives from government and regional agencies from China to New York State. With both companies heavily involved in memory commodity products, lower manufacturing costs are a key strategic goal. This fact has enabled Taiwan in particular to demonstrate lower wafer costs than some competitors in the memory market in recent years. Taiwan has been touted as Elpida's location for its next 300mm fab, due also to the fact that it partners with Powerchip Semiconductor Corp for DRAM supply. However, in Toshiba's case its NAND manufacturing partner is SanDisk a US based captive electronics company. Toshiba and SanDisk could therefore be thinking of having a fab located in the US, especially considering States such as Oregon, Texas and New York have well defined and substantial incentive packages in place! Indeed Saito was reported as saying by Reuters that incentives and a good pool of engineering skills were key considerations for Toshiba. However, it should be said that Toshiba should not be expected to announce where a new fab will be located until sometime in 2007 as it does not expect to reach capacity at Fab 4 until sometime in 2009 with an aggressive ramp rate maintained. 
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