Joint venture to build semiconductor plant here
Joint venture to build semiconductor plant here
BEKASI, West Java (JP): PT NEC Humpuss Semiconductors Indonesia, a Japanese joint venture, broke ground here yesterday for a US$45-million plant which will manufacture semiconductors.
"The 8,000-square-meter plant will be built on a 100,000- square-meter area and the construction will be completed in October this year," the company's president, Masaru Nakagiri, said at the ground-breaking ceremony.
The joint venture, established in September with an investment of US$15.4 million, is 65 percent owned by NEC Corporation of Japan, 25 percent by PT Humpuss Elektronika and 10 percent by Sumitomo Corporation of Japan.
Nakagiri said that manufacturing operations will begin in January 1997 with a monthly output of 15 million linear integrated circuits (ICs) and 100 million signal transistors, all of which are basic materials for the production of personal computers, television sets, video cassette recorders and other electronic equipment.
"We have an ambitious five-year plan to eventually employ 600 people and have annual sales of $40 million," he said.
NEC Corporation's senior vice president, Yuichi Haneta, told The Jakarta Post after the ceremony that all products of the joint venture will be exported to Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan.
"We plan to market ICs and transistors on the Indonesian market only in 1998 or 1999, when demand is feasible," Haneta said.
He added that the global semiconductor market showed growth of 40 percent last year to over $150 billion.
The president of Humpuss Elektronika, Agus P. Soeroso, said that his company decided to get involved in the joint venture after the Japanese partners confirmed the exportation of all of its planned output.
NEC Humpuss Semiconductors is the third semiconductor company in the country after PT Astra Microtronics Technology and the Sharp Corporation.
Astra Microtronics, operating in Batam, Riau, is a joint venture established in 1990 by PT Astra Graphia and two Singaporean firms. Astra Microtronics produces 236 million ICs per year, whose export earns Astra some $42 million per annum.
Sharp Corporation operates its plant in Karawang, West Java, where it produces 20 million semiconductors, including ICs, per month.
All the materials and components for the production of semiconductors by NEC Humpuss Semiconductors, Astra Microtronics and Sharp are imported from Japan. (kod)