Japanese electronics maker Kyocera said Wednesday it will invest 62 billion yen ($470 million) in a new plant for semiconductor-related components, the first domestic production facility it has built-in two decades. Kyocera broke ground on the plant in Isahaya, Nagasaki Prefecture, later this fiscal year. The ¥62 billion is earmarked for the period through March 2029.
President Hideo Tanimoto said at a press conference in Nagasaki City, “We will capture the market for advanced semiconductor components, a market that will double in the medium to long term.”
Construction is expected to be completed by April 2026, with operations starting the following year. The plant will produce fine ceramic components for chip manufacturing machinery, as well as packaging materials for advanced semiconductors.
The plant is expected to be worth 25 billion yen in fiscal 2028. This will be the company’s first domestic plant since it opened its Ayabe plant in Kyoto Prefecture in 2005.
As semiconductor nodes shrink to a few nanometers in size, their production requires increasingly complex processes. This has created a growing demand for ceramic components for lithography systems. Compared to metal components, ceramics offer greater resistance to thermal expansion and corrosion.
Kyocera has a 70-80% global share in a range of ceramic components. So far, the company has responded to demand by expanding capacity at its flagship plant in Kagoshima Prefecture on Kyushu Island and elsewhere.
But “it is likely that we will not be able to find enough people in the future,” Tanimoto said of the existing plant. Kyocera chose Isahaya for its new plant because of the area’s convenient transportation system and semiconductor expertise.
Isahaya is also located on Kyushu Island, a smartphone image sensor production site operated by the Sony Group. Nagasaki Governor Kengo Oishi, who attended the press conference with Tanimoto, hopes to turn the prefecture into the nation’s second-largest semiconductor center after nearby Kumamoto Prefecture. Oishi said, “I hope to strengthen synergies in the semiconductor industry by focusing on introducing related companies and developing human resources.”
Kyocera plans to make overall capital expenditures of 900 billion yen in the three years ending March 2026, roughly twice as much as in the previous three years. Half of the capital expenditures will be spent on semiconductor-related businesses.
By fiscal 2028, Kyocera expects to generate 1 trillion yen in sales from its core components segment, which makes semiconductor-related materials, up 90 percent from fiscal 2021.
Packaging components will account for about 60 percent of the division’s revenue in fiscal 2021. Tokyo-based Fuji Chimera Research Institute reports that the global semiconductor packaging market will expand 48% to about 13.6 trillion yen in 2028 compared with 2021.
