Vietnam semiconductor magnet attracts billions in foreign investments

Vietnam has been attracting foreign investments worth billions of dollars into the semiconductor sector, with South Korea’s Hana Micron the latest investor.

Hana Micron plans to invest $1 billion into producing semiconductors in Vietnam by 2025. The South Korean firm inaugurated its first semiconductor plant last month in Bac Giang province.

The project, located at the Van Trung Industrial Park, is the first of its kind in northern Vietnam. It is also the second factory of Hana Micron Vina, a subsidiary of the South Korean group, in the northern province. The first, which began operations in 2022, manufactures integrated circuit boards for mobile phones and other smart electronic products.

At the inaugural ceremony of the second plant, Choi Chang Ho, chairman of Hana Micron, said Hana Micron Vina will be the group’s number one production facility in the world and that Vietnam personnel will account for 70% of its total workforce.

He also said then that the group would raise its investment in the province from the current $600 million to more than $1 billion in 2025, generating annual revenues of $800 million and creating 4,000 jobs for Vietnamese workers.

Amkor in Bac Ninh

Meanwhile, the northern province of Bac Ninh is about to welcome official operations of a plant invested in by the U.S.-based semiconductor firm Amkor Technology Inc. The firm has said it plans to invest about $1.6 billion until 2035 on building a state-of-the-art facility in the province that is home to two Samsung factories.

In July, Bac Ninh authorities said that Amkor’s factory was set to begin operations in October, providing fresh impetus for the province’s economic growth. The factory will be among the biggest operated by Amkor globally, covering 1.9 million square feet (over 176,500 square meters).

The Vietnamese plant's size will be only behind Amkor's South Korean factory that has an area of 4.4 million square feet. Other major production sites are in Japan (1.8 million square feet), Shanghai (1.4 million square feet), and the Philippines (1.3 million square feet).

The plant will deliver advanced system-in-package (SiP) modules and other packaging solutions, helping the firm with supply chain diversification.

Intel in Ho Chi Minh City

American giant chipmaker Intel began its Vietnam investments in 2006, building Intel Products Vietnam (IPV)

in Ho Chi Minh City as its single largest assembly and test plant. With a total investment of $1.5 billion to date, it is the largest U.S. high-tech investment in Vietnam.

Intel has plans to invest another $1.5 billion in Vietnam for chip manufacturing, said Nguyen Mai, chairman of the Vietnam Association of Foreign-Invested Enterprises (VAFIE). This would be Intel's third factory outside the U.S., with the other two in Scotland and Israel, he added.

Intel CEO Patrick Gelsinger said at a meeting with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh in May 2022 that his firm has plans to expand its business and investment in Vietnam. The expansion would feature environmentally friendly hi-tech advancements and close cooperation with Vietnamese enterprises, he added.

Samsung in Thai Nguyen

In December 2021, Samsung announced it would invest $850 million in Vietnam for manufacturing flip-chip ball grid array, a component of semiconductor chips. In August 2022, the South Korean tech giant said that it was preparing for the trial production of flip-chip ball grid array in the northern province of Thai Nguyen,

Besides, in December 2022, Samsung Electronics inaugurated its largest Southeast Asia research and development center in Hanoi. The 16-story facility has a floor area of 79,511 square meters where 2,200 researchers will carry out projects in mobile devices, network communication technologies and software.

In a talk with The Investor late last week, Pham Chi Lan, former vice president of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), said the Vietnamese government needs to consider incentives beyond the existing regulatory framework to stimulate the development of its fledgling semiconductor industry as the country seeks further integration into global chip-related supply chains, said

Don Lam, general director and founding partner of VinaCapital, argued that what Vietnam needs is human training. "Vietnam should train engineers in this industry because the industry has huge potential. Sooner or later, Vietnamese companies will involve in the ecosystem of semiconductor manufacturing before long," he told the 2023 Investor Conference organized by VinaCapital in HCMC on Tuesday.