The expansion of Samsung's memory chip factory in China was stalled for a few weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the company's Vice Chairman Lee Jae-Yong recently visited the factory to assess the operations. Today, the South Korean company said that it has sent an additional 300 employees to China to oversee the plant's expansion.
The company said that its engineers and workers, including sub-contractors, left for Xi'an from South Korea in a chartered flight earlier today. All those employees would be exempt from the 14-day quarantine rule under the fast-track entry process. Samsung had already sent 200 engineers to the memory chip factory in Shaanxi Province last month.
Samsung's Xi'an plant is its only memory chip production facility outside of South Korea. Production at the plant first started in 2014 and an expansion plan was announced in 2017. The South Korean semiconductor chip giant had announced that it would invest around $8 billion for the plant's expansion. Mass production at the upgraded facility is expected to start anytime soon.
Lee Jae-Yong also met Shaanxi Province leader Hu Heping to improve business cooperation. The South Korean firm has big plans to become the world's number one semiconductor firm by the year 2030 as a part of its ‘Semiconductor Vision 2030.' The plan includes an investment of $115 billion so that it could defeat the likes of Intel and TSMC in terms of chip design and production.
