Korea's Hanmi Semiconductor opens office in northern Vietnam

South Korea’s Hanmi Semiconductor has opened an office in the northern province of Bac Ninh, the semiconductor equipment company announced on Wednesday.

“The global branch office, Hanmi Vietnam, will provide services to customers in Vietnam through sales and service engineer experts,” said DS Kwak, vice chairman of Hanmi Semiconductor. The establishment aims to serve the increasingly important Vietnamese market, he added.

Hanmi Semiconductor highlighted Vietnam as an investment destination for global semiconductor companies, with the possibility of forming a stable value chain amid the prolonged U.S.-China trade conflict. Vietnam holds many advantages, including political stability, low labor costs, abundant human resources, and accessibility to high-tech supply chains in Asia.

Samsung, the largest foreign investor in Vietnam with $20 billion, has two facilities in Bac Ninh province, namely Samsung Electronics Vietnam and Samsung Display. Last year, Samsung announced a total investment plan of $2.27 billion to expand its next-generation semiconductor substrate (FC-BGA) business.

U.S.-based Amkor Technology Inc., a global semiconductor product packaging and test services provider, expects its Vietnam mega facility to begin first-phase manufacturing in the fourth quarter of this year. The factory will be among the biggest operated by Amkor globally, covering 1.9 million square feet (over 176,500 square meters) in the northern province of Bac Ninh. It is the company's second largest plant after Amkor's South Korean factory that covers 4.4 million square feet.

Other parts of Vietnam are also attracting foreign semiconductor businesses. American giant Intel was the first major corporation to open a facility to make parts for the chip-making process in Vietnam, with its test and assembly facility based in HCMC. Intel has invested $1.5 billion in Vietnam since 2006, making it the country's largest U.S. technology investor.

Last year, Intel received an investment certificate of $1.2 billion to manufacture chips in HCMC. The HCMC unit is Intel’s third chip factory in the world, besides the ones in Scotland and Israel, and is set to supply 20% of the global demand for chips, according to Vietnam’s Association of Foreign Invested Enterprises (VAFIE) chairman Prof. Nguyen Mai.

Vietnam has risen as the third largest chip exporter to the U.S., behind Malaysia and Taiwan, according to the Vietnamese Ministry of Information and Communications. In February 2023, its semiconductor exports to the U.S. reached $562.5 million, up from $321.7 million in February 2022. Most of Vietnam’s chip exports come from foreign-invested companies.