Toshiba Scouting for Plant Site on Coast
Toshiba America’s semiconductor division is looking for a site on the West Coast for a $250-million semiconductor manufacturing plant, the company said Tuesday.
The plant would employ at least 200 people and would be open at the end of 1992, said Tadashi Wakayama, president of Toshiba America Electronics Components Inc., whose semiconductor division makes memory chips and related devices.
Though the division is based in Irvine, Orange County is an “unlikely” candidate to win the site for several reasons. The plant must have a good water supply and should be located near a pool of semiconductor engineering resources and a network of electronics suppliers, Wakayama said.
He declined to identify sites under consideration, but industry sources say the Portland, Ore., area and Northern California are prime candidates.
Toshiba needs the plant because its current factory in Sunnyvale, where it employs 230 people, will soon reach capacity. The company completed a $30-million expansion of the Sunnyvale plant in April, 1989, and it is investing $20 million and hiring 80 more workers this year to give the plant greater abilities to produce custom chips known as application specific integrated circuits (ASIC).
The planned plant would also produce ASIC chips, but Wakayama said no decisions have been made about the exact mix of semiconductor products would be produced.
Wakayama said the plans for the plant are contingent upon an expected 20% per year growth rate in the subsidiary’s business. Orange County’s chances of getting the site would improve if that growth is not achieved and the company decides to build a smaller plant.
For the fiscal year ended March 31, Toshiba America Electronic Components’ semiconductor division reported sales of $1.1 billion. Last year Toshiba had a 6.6% share of the North American semiconductor market, making it the fourth-largest semiconductor manufacturer in the region, according to Dataquest, a market research firm in San Jose.
TAEC’s semiconductor unit employs 2,000 people, including 300 at its headquarters in Irvine. At full capacity, the new proposed plant could employ about 600 people.
