Home > Industry > Texas Power and Water Outages Cost Samsung Over $347 Million

Texas Power and Water Outages Cost Samsung Over $347 Million

Samsung Electronics Co. said Thursday that a four-week shutdown at its Texan chip manufacturing plant cost it over AUD$347 million in losses. The plant is now up and running again.

“There was a wafer production disruption due to the stopping and recovering of the fab,” Han Seung-hoon, Senior VP at Samsung’s foundry business, told investors.

“About 71,000 wafers were affected, and this corresponds to around 300 to 400 billion won [AUD$348,272 – AUD$464,363] in damage.

“The power and water outage were preannounced, so we did have time to prepare,” Han explains. “I think we were able to bring the operation back to normalisation earlier than we expected.”

This was the largest ever shutdown of a Samsung manufacturing plant. Han said he is in talks with Texan officials and Austin-based utilities companies to ensure such a long shutdown won’t happen in the future.

“The company will prepare to expand the supply in the second half of the year through the start of mass production at the Pyeongtaek Line 2 [in South Korea],” Samsung wrote in a release.

“In the second half, growth in the foundry market is expected to exceed previous projections due to the acceleration of 5G penetration, a resumption of corporate IT investments and growing demand from customers securing safety stock.”



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