Bosch invests an additional 250 million euros to expand production capacity to meet the needs of MEMS and power semiconductors

In response to the continuing global chip shortage, Bosch will invest an additional 250 million euros to expand its chip production facility in Roytringen, Germany, which is expected to be put into use in 2025, Bosch said in a statement.

"We are systematically expanding our semiconductor manufacturing capacity in Roytringen, and this additional investment will not only strengthen our competitiveness, but also benefit our customers and help deal with the crisis in the semiconductor supply chain," Dr. Stefan Hartung, chairman of Bosch's management committee, said in a statement.

In fact, this is not Bosch's first investment in the Roytringen plant. In October last year, Bosch announced that it would spend more than 400 million euros this year. Most of the money will be used to expand the plant in Dresden, 50 million euros will be used to expand the plant in Roytringen, and a semiconductor test center will be set up in Penang, Malaysia.

According to reports, the further expansion of Royt Lingen will meet the growing demand for MEMS and silicon carbide power semiconductors in the automotive and consumer sectors.

It is reported that the problem of "lack of core" in the automobile industry has continued from 2021 to 2022. According to AFS, an authoritative forecaster, the lack of cores has reduced global car production by about 527400 units since 2022, more than the agency had expected. According to Yole, the silicon carbide (SiC) device market is estimated to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 30 per cent (CAGR), from $225 million in 2019 to more than $2.5 billion in 2025.

At present, in addition to Bosch, Toshiba, Roma and other industrial chain manufacturers are also stepping up production expansion actions to deal with the "lack of core" problem.

On February 4 this year, Toshiba announced that it would build a new 12-inch wafer manufacturing facility at the main discrete device production base in Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan (Kaga Toshiba Electronics) to expand power semiconductor production capacity. According to the statement, the first phase of the new plant is scheduled to start production in 2024, and when the first phase of the project is running at full capacity, Toshiba's power semiconductor production capacity will be 2.5 times that of fiscal 2021.

In December last year, Roma spent 8.2 billion yen to build a new plant in Gilantan, Malaysia, in January 2022, which is scheduled to be completed in August 2023, when completed, its capacity will be expanded to 1.5 times.