The crisis caused by the shortage of semiconductors is causing the companies dedicated to its manufacture to take all kinds of measures not only to prevent it from happening again once it is over, such as the construction of new factories spread all over the world. They are also taking them for increase its current chip manufacturing capacity.
For example, the investment that they are going to make this year in machinery to manufacture chips, which is going to register a record level. Thus, the investment in equipment for chip manufacturing plants will rise 20% this year up to 109,000 million dollars. This is reflected in the World Fab Forecast reportproduced by the semiconductor industry group Semi.
Investment in machinery to manufacture chips has risen more than notably in recent years. Thus, in 2019, semiconductor manufacturers invested slightly less than half of what they are going to spend this year in their purchase: 55,000 million dollars. Of course, Semi expects the growth of investment in this field to stabilize in 2023.
The current investment is expected to translate into an increase in chip production capacity by 8% in 2022. This growth is on top of the 7% that has already improved in 2021. If all goes according to forecast, in 2023 it will rise another 6 %.
Companies with chip factories, including TSMC, Samsung and Globalfoundries, will take about 53% of industrial manufacturing equipment in 2022 and 2023. As for memory manufacturers, such as Micron and SK Hynix, they will take with 33% in 2022 and 34% in 2023. Semi estimates that the memory and other chip manufacturing sectors will improve their capacity the most this year.
With these data it is not surprising that taiwan East at the top of the lists of companies that will invest in equipment manufacturing this year. Semi says Taiwan will increase investment in equipment for chip factories 52%, up to 34,000 million. It will therefore monopolize 31% of the total investment expected for 2022.
Second on this list is South Korea, the headquarters of companies such as Samsung and SK Hynix. The country is expected to increase its investment in equipment this year 7%up to 25.5 billion dollars, 23% of the total for 2022. Meanwhile, In China, investment in equipment will drop by 14%, up to 17,000 million dollars. It is 16% of the total.
Europe and the Middle East will also increase their investment in equipment. But in this region the rise is going to be stratospheric: 176%, up to 9,300 million. This is because until recently, EMEA relied heavily on chip factories in the Asian region, but for a few years they have been trying to increase their production capacity in the region to reduce their dependence on Asia. In total, in 2022 they will invest 9% of the total. Meanwhile, in the Americas, investment in equipment to manufacture chips will improve by 19% to 8.2 billion, 8% of the total by 2022.
According to SMI, in 2023, America plans to grow investment in equipment for chip factories by 13% to 9.3 billion dollars. That same year, Taiwan, South Korea, and in general, in Southeast Asia, expect to make record investments in machinery to manufacture chips.
