Samsung Electronics to invest $3.6 billion at US plant

The world's second largest memory chip maker after Intel, Samsung Electronics today said that it would invest $3.6 billion to expand capacity at its US plant as the South Korean company adopts an aggressive global investment plan to meet with the upturn in the semiconductor market after a sharp decline bought on by the recession.

Samsung Austin Semiconductor (SAS), located in Austin, Texas, owned by Samsung Electronics, which is the company's only semiconductor manufacturing plant located outside of South Korea, will expand the capacity of its 12-inch semiconductor fabrication plant with a $3.6 billion investment.

The expanded fabrication plant, one of the largest in the US, will produce advanced logic devices for Samsung's System large scale integration business.

Currently the Austin plant produces a variety of NAND Flash memory chips used in mobile phones and digital cameras, and the production of these chips will continue, said SAS.

The new facility, which is dedicated to front-end fabrication of advanced 45 nanometer logic process technology and beyond, is expected to be completed by the end of 2011.

Samsung began construction of its first plant in Austin in 1996 and has since then, invested about $5.6 billion. The new investment will bring the total investment by Samsung in Austin to more than $9 billion.

With a sudden surge in sales of smartphones, digital cameras, digital TV sets and other products, the Seoul-based semiconductor giant that had revenues of $117.4 billion in 2009 and net profit of $8.33 billion, had last month announced that it would more than double its investments on new plants and LCD panel production from 4.5 trillion won in 2009 to a record 11 trillion won ($8.7 billion) this year.