Sipex Corp. has signed a definitive agreement with Hangzhou Silan Microelectronics Co., Ltd. and Hangzhou Silan Integrated Circuit Co., Ltd. This agreement covers foundry manufacturing, product licenses, process technology transfers and fab equipment sales.
"We are very excited to finalize our agreement," said Ralph Schmitt, CEO of Sipex. "We are pleased with the progress of transferring our process technologies to Silan. They have been a great partner to date, and with the formalization of our relationship I expect we will be even more successful together."
Silan has already seen "excellent yielding material" out of two different process technologies, according to a written statement. The expectation is to complete all process qualifications in this year. During the transfer, production at the Sipex Milpitas fab has continued with excellent output.
"I want to thank our employees in Milpitas who have kept our fab fully operational during this transition time," stated Joel Camarda, SVP of Operations for Sipex. "We continue to need their support as we transition to a fabless company. Silan and Sipex engineers have also been working diligently to ensure that we meet the scheduled transfer. This is critical to ensuring support of our customers."
Silan currently has two 5-inch fab lines that are running 20,000 IC wafers/month, plus 20,000 discrete product wafers per month. The production capacity of the Silan fab will ramp to 34,000 wafers per month, providing Sipex with significant upside potential. The Sipex equipment will be sent to Silan after the transition is complete, giving Silan the ability to increase their output by migrating to the 6-inch equipment.
Fan Wei-Hong, general manager of Silan-IC, expressed his support of the partnership. "This agreement will enable both companies to grow our businesses and be more competitive in the analog market. The competencies of the two companies match very well."
Sipex and Silan-IC expect to further evolve this strategic relationship into other areas for expansion of their businesses. This will allow for significant leverage in attacking the rapidly growing Greater China marketplace.
