TSMC plant in Germany: Decision should not be made until summer

There still seems to be no final decision on plans to build TSMC’s first plant in Europe. As has now become known, the world’s largest chip contract manufacturer wants to decide by the summer whether the plant will be built in Germany.

According to a report by the Taiwan Industry Service DigiTimes the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is still unsure whether the planned construction of the group’s first large chip factory in Europe should take place in Germany, as originally planned.

Citing sources close to the company, it is said that a decision will be reached this summer. The group is currently apparently trying to collect information from its suppliers about the delivery of equipment and materials for chip production to Germany in order to make the relevant calculations and be able to better estimate the costs.

Low demand could result in delays or waivers

Another hurdle for TSMC in expanding to Germany is that many suppliers are convinced that building up their own capacities in Germany is only worthwhile if TSMC itself achieves sufficiently large production numbers at its planned location. Until then, most suppliers do not want to invest in capacities in Germany themselves, but will stick to production in Taiwan. Another factor is that the recent sharp drop in demand for electronic products has also led to TSMC selling significantly fewer chips. The Taiwanese chip manufacturer has therefore started to slow down the expansion of its production capacities in Taiwan and other countries so as not to risk that the new plants cannot be sufficiently utilized in the future. The background, of course, is, as so often, the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.

TSMC is a contract manufacturer and as such produces the chips of well-known brands such as Nvidia, AMD and Qualcomm. It is also the most important supplier to the US computer group Apple, which has its state-of-the-art ARM chips produced in gigantic quantities at TSMC.

See also:

Logo, Chip, Tsmc, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company