South Korea's Samsung and Siltronic, a leading maker of silicon wafers and a unit of German chemicals group Wacker Chemie, are planning to jointly build a 300-milimeter wafer factory in Singapore, an AFP report said.
The AFP report said the factory would be a 50-50 joint venture and would be called Siltronic Samsung Wafer, according to a statement from the two firms.
The project, the first time that a semiconductor maker has teamed up with a silicon wafer manufacturer, represented a total investment of $1 billion.
Samsung's board of directors and the supervisory board of Siltronic have already approved the venture, the report said.
The necessary regulatory approval was expected by the end of August, when construction would begin. Production was scheduled to start mid-2008 and the site was estimated to reach a capacity of 300,000 wafers a month by 2010 on a workforce of 800, the statement said.
In response to the continuously rising demand for 300mm wafer in the computer chip industry, Siltronic already decided in November last year to significantly expand production capacity at its wafer factories in Freiberg and Burghausen in Germany, the report said.