Rohm and Haas expands Asia-Pacific manufacturing plant

Rohm and Haas’ Hsinchu plant has been fully operational and in production since March 2007 and was designed to allow for multiple phased expansions to meet the future demands for both 200- and 300-mm CMP pad requirements in Asia.


Hsinchu, Taiwan-based Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials’ CMP Technologies business, a supplier of chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) technology, said today it is increasing investments in its Asia-Pacific pad manufacturing facility located in Hsinchu, Taiwan in order to speed up the company’s capacity expansion to meet the growing demand for CMP pads from semiconductor manufacturing customers in Asia.

Rohm and Haas’ Hsinchu plant (pictured left) has been fully operational and in production since March 2007 and was designed to allow for multiple phased expansions to meet the future demands for both 200- and 300-mm CMP pad requirements in Asia.

While the pad finishing operations have been fully functional since March 2007, complete pad manufacturing, including casting operations for the company’s VisionPad platform and the IC1000 AT pad series, will be operational in early 2009, Rohm and Haas reported. The Hsinchu facility maintains a local inventory of finished pads to further support customers in the region, the company pointed out.

Sam Shoemaker, president of Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials, CMP Technologies said in a statement, “The conversion to Hsinchu supply has been smooth and faster than originally anticipated. Customer qualifications of the facility are going extremely well, and we are well ahead of our original capacity expansion schedule.”

The company also noted that to keep pace with demand, its staff has grown faster than originally planned, and expects to employ more than 200 people in Taiwan by the end of this year, representing a strong mix of talented local personnel, ranging from manufacturing staff and product technicians to advanced CMP applications and technical service engineers.

“We fully expect that opportunities at the Hsinchu plant will continue to grow as we expand and transfer new technologies to this state-of-the-art facility,” added Cliff Chen, plant manager for the company’s Asia-Pacific manufacturing facility.

In other recent Rohm and Haas news, the Dow Chemical Co is set to acquire Rohm and Haas for $78 per share in cash of Rohm and Haas’ outstanding common stock, in a deal worth $18.8 billion.

Also, in February of this year, the company expanded its partnership with IBM to include 32- and 22-nm copper CMP as well as 32-nm and below implant technology.


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