Power Failure Halts Samsung Chip Production Lines

A power outage at a Samsung Electronics chip plant located in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province Friday forced the world`s largest memory chipmaker to halt production. It is the first time that the company has halted production because of a power failure.

Since the chipmaking process is around the clock, a disruption in the assembly line caused all wafers, thin slices of semiconductor material, to be removed. It usually takes several days to weeks to resume full production. Thus, the economic costs of the power failure are expected to be huge. Experts estimated, “The damage by the blackout could cost the company tens of billions of won to hundreds of billions of won.”

Samsung Electronics said, "Due to a problem at the switchboard of a transformer substation, a power shortage occurred at 2:30 p.m. local time in the Giheung complex." The blackout affected six production lines that produce NAND flash memory chips and non-memory chips. The power shortage is feared to have negative impact on the company’s third quarter performance as it affects NAND chips, one of its major higher value-added businesses.

A Samsung official said in response, “A spike at a transformer triggered the power failure, but it didn’t lead to a fire. Right after the incident, the system’s “uninterruptible power supply,” also known as a battery backup, started, so we maintained our facilities and safety as normal.”