Semiconductor shortage persists after new wave of Covid in Asia

Posted on Oct 1, 2021, 6:42 PM

The ordeal never ends. Paralyzed in the automotive industry or forced to suffer price increases in the high-tech world, customers of semiconductor manufacturers are always urged to take their troubles patiently. While the most optimistic imagined better days after the summer, the shortage of electronic components essential to the production of cars and smartphones should continue for many months to come.

Started a year ago when global demand for processors, sensors and microcontrollers suddenly exploded after the spring 2020 containments, the crisis has continued to be fueled by new factors ever since. After the fire in a factory owned by the Japanese company Renesas, the bad weather that closed a Samsung foundry in Texas last winter and the drought in Taiwan in the spring, global production has been slowed for several weeks by the resurgence of the epidemic of Covid-19 in Southeast Asia, including Malaysia and Vietnam.

Closure in Malaysia

Overwhelmed this summer by a wave of the Delta variant, the Malaysian government in particular imposed the closure of many “packaging” factories, the last step before the delivery of electronic chips in which the local microelectronics industry has specialized. In total, 7% of the chips produced on the planet pass through Malaysia.

For example, the Franco-Italian group STMicroelectronics closed its factory in Muar, in the south of the peninsula, for 11 days last July. “This will have an impact on our ability to serve our customers,” warned Lorenzo Grandi, the financial director of the company headed by Jean-Marc Chéry.

While the authorities lifted travel bans in early September, the situation is gradually returning to normal. According to an observer, the country has now regained 80% of its production capacity.

2022 at the earliest

But halfway around the world, customers are still running out of chips to fill their own factories with consumer goods. The automaker Stellantis (born from the merger between PSA and Fiat-Chrisler) has just decided to close its Opel plant in Eisenach until early 2022. If the situation in the supply chains allows …

Eager to capture the tremendous growth of their market, chipmakers are however increasing their plans for the creation or extension of factories. “It takes 18-24 months to open a new factory and in some cases it’s longer. These investments began a year ago, ”said Lisa Su at the end of September, the boss of the specialist in microprocessors AMD who, for lack of a clean factory, has to take her trouble patiently. On the stage of the Code Conference, in Beverly Hills, she hoped for a relaxation of the market in the second half of 2022.

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