Sony will build a new semiconductor plant in Thailand to produce image sensors for vehicles, shifting labor-intensive work from Japan to Thailand and controlling production costs by spreading its production base around the world, while also creating a semiconductor supply chain that can respond to emergencies, according to the Nikkei News.
Sony will invest about 10 billion yen (about 510 million yuan) to build a new building at its production site in central Thailand, according to the report. Work is already underway, and the plant will begin operations in the fiscal year ending March 2025.
The new plant will be responsible for manufacturing a new image sensor, but unlike the common IMX766 such Exmor, the new line focuses on automotive chips designed for self-driving cars to identify pedestrians and obstacles.
Once completed, Sony’s production scale in Thailand will directly increase to 170% of the original, and the company will also employ 2,000 people to work in the plant.
Nikkei pointed out that Sony’s front-end process on wafers, a key component of semiconductors, will be completed in Japan, while the factory in Thailand will only be responsible for the back-end processing, making the wafers into thin chips, and the final product made will be exported worldwide.
Sony currently handles most of the front-end and back-end processes for automotive sensors in its Japanese factories, and the company now appears to be planning to focus its Japanese efforts on front-end processing and let its Thai operations take over the rest.
