Photronics Opens Plant to Make Photomasks in Southeast Asia
May 11, 2011
SINGAPORE -- The semiconductor industry may be in the dumps, but one company that makes essential ingredients for the high-tech manufacturing process is in full expansion mode. U.S.-listed Photronics Inc. opened the first plant in Southeast Asia making the templates that are used to trace semiconductor designs onto raw silicon wafers. It's a technical but crucial step in the chip manufacturing process, one in which product delivery is measured in hours. With the only plant in the region, Photronics should quickly gain market share as well as enabling this booming region to attract even more chip makers, executives say. The move marks an important step in the Brookfield Center, Conn.-based company's attempt to go global, president and chief operating officer Michaele Fair says. The quartz templates Photronics makes, called photomasks, are required to manufacture semiconductor chips and make up a US$1.5 billion industry, of which Photronics has about an 11% share, according to the company. With key U.S.-based customers such as Texas Instruments Inc. now operating around the world, and Asian chip makers accounting for a rising portion of the US$150 billion semiconductor industry, Photronics had to get nearer to the plants it was serving, Mr. Fair says. ``This is a service industry,'' he says in an interview at Photronics' 20,000 square-foot facility, which officially opened Wednesday. ``The time to market is key -- sometimes 24 hours or less.'' The plant is also another step in the Singapore government's continuing efforts to attract high-tech foreign investment, a campaign that is getting difficult to wage as the cost of doing business rises in Singapore while its lower-cost neighbors offer increasingly well-trained engineers. The case of Photronics, however, shows how Singapore remains competitive when it comes to very high-technology operations that are willing to pay a bit more for a communications, transportation and technology infrastructure that is unsurpassed in the region. And it adds another selling point when the government is courting semiconductor manufacturers, which it's doing intensely now in an attempt to meet its target of 25 more chip plants here by the year 2015. Taking the design specifications from the manufacturer, Photronics builds what might be considered a negative for semiconductor chips, a quartz template of nearly unimaginable precision on which any flaws will be mass produced onto hundreds or thousands of chips. In Singapore, Photronics will be able work closely with three current customers: government-owned Chartered Semiconductor Pte. Ltd., Tech Semiconductor Pte. Ltd. and SGS Thomson.
