Hamamatsu plans $57m opto-semiconductor facility with sustainability in mind

Published: 23-Mar-2023

The new facility has been planned to be highly resistant to natural disasters, whilst also enacting eco-friendly measures such as heat-insulating structures and solar power generation systems on the roof

Hamamatsu Photonics has announced it will construct a new factory at its Shingai Factory site located in Shingai-cho, Minami-ku, Hamamatsu City, Japan. The total cost for the build is planned to be 7.5 billion yen (over $57m) and will produce an estimated 30 billion yen ($230m) annually.

The new facility will increase overall production capacity in the post-processing (dicing, assembly, and inspection) of opto-semiconductor devices. Mainly used for semiconductor manufacturing, testing equipment and LiDAR*-related devices, it will support the expanding sales demands.

The groundbreaking ceremony for the new factory building was held at the start of March 2023, and the new factory building will be completed in March, 2025.

The roof floor will supply the factory power needs with a solar power plant

Hamamatsu Photonics has been supplying opto-semiconductor products for a broad range of fields including medical, industrial and automotive applications. In recent years, demand for image sensors used in semiconductor manufacturing and testing equipment has continued to grow, and since photodiodes for the automotive LiDAR market is also expected to expand, we anticipate a constant sales increase in the future.

The new facility

Construction of the new factory building will expand production space for image sensors and photodiodes to meet an ever-increasing product demand. This new building will connect to the two existing factory buildings to integrate the cleanrooms at the Shingai Factory into one area space. This will allow Hamamatsu to streamline the movement of people and materials to improve production efficiency as well as automate the manufacturing process and save labour through digital transformation.

The new build will have a footprint of 3,823 sqm, and total floor space of 13,343 sqm. The 1st-3rd floors will host assembly process cleanrooms for opto-semiconductors, whilst the 4th floor will contain a process design office, inspection process. Finally, the roof floor will supply the factory power needs with a solar power plant.

The third Shingai factory building is designed to be highly resistant to natural disasters by integrating earthquake and flood countermeasures into its structure in conformance with our business continuity planning. Its proactive design features include eco-friendly measures such as heat-insulating structures and solar power generation systems.

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Construction of this new factory building will complete the company's major capital investments at the Shingai Factory site.

Since demand for opto-semiconductors is widely expected to see future growth, we plan to construct another factory building at our main factory site for wafer pre-processing within the next three years. Here we expect to establish a new manufacturing process for 8-inch diameter silicon wafers with a larger area than conventional 6-inch diameter waters. We aim to double the sales of our opto-semiconductor business in 10 years by expanding the post-processing capacity and further upgrading the production system through various business approaches including this investment.

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