Tanaka Holdings Company Limited announced that Tanaka Denshi Kogyo KK of Tanaka Precious Metals, which boasts the world's leading share in the manufacture of bonding wire will establish a production subsidiary for manufacturing copper bonding wire in Taiwan and will begin manufacturing on February 1st 2012.
Tanaka Electronics Taiwan Company Limited the new company establishing a production center in Zhongli City in Taoyuan County of Taiwan, will have capital of TWD285 million and will be Tanaka Denshi Kogyo's fourth wire production center worldwide following on from Japan, Singapore and China. In the Taiwanese market with rapidly increasing demand for copper wire, transactions with semiconductor manufacturers such as subcontractors in the semiconductor assembly process are increasing and the company aims to ship 100 million meters of wire per month by 2014.
With gold prices at a high level, there is a growing trend of using copper wire as a substitute for gold wire that has previously been widely used as bonding wire for connecting semiconductor integrated circuits and external electrodes. It is estimated that approximately 1 billion meters of bonding wire is produced per month worldwide. Copper wire already accounts for around 20% of all bonding wire at present, and as substitution of gold wire mainly in emerging economies in Asia began to accelerate in 2010, this proportion may increase to around 40% by 2013.
Tanaka Denshi Kogyo has previously established production centers in China and Singapore to meet demand for copper wire. Until now, only product sales and technical support functions were established in Taiwan, and bonding wire manufactured in Japan and Singapore was provided to Taiwanese customers. Tanaka Electronics Taiwan was established based on the decision that sales channels could be expanded with the acceleration of the transition to copper wire in Taiwan. In addition to being able to establish a speedy product supply system more deeply rooted in local customers, this will also enable the company to strengthen its BCP for dealing with emergencies such as natural disasters and damage to social infrastructure by dispersing risk throughout the supply chain.
Tanaka Denshi Kogyo has the world's leading share in bonding wire as a whole and gold wire. Through the establishment of Tanaka Electronics Taiwan, Tanaka Denshi Kogyo aims to expand its share in copper wire, and gain the world's leading share in copper wire by 2014.
