Showa Denko Group Doubles the Site of Storage Facility for Semiconductor Processing High-Purity Gas in South Korea

September 05, 2022
Showa Denko K.K.

Korea Showa Chemicals Co. (KSC), which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Showa Denko K.K. (SDK) (TOKYO: 4004), has conducted construction work to expand the site of specialty gas storage facility in Anseong-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea to better serve the growing demand for high-purity gases for semiconductor production. Through this expansion, the Showa Denko Group will strengthen stability of its system to supply specialty gases for semiconductor production, notwithstanding the ongoing global logistics problem.

In this expansion work, KSC almost doubled the site of the storage facility which had been established in 2007. KSC has also expanded the facility’s storage capacity, rebuilt office building, and strengthened the company’s customer support system. KSC will continue rebuilding of the storage facility, and increase the storage capacity of the existing facility to be twice as much as that of the initial one.

KSC operates a business to handle high-purity gases for semiconductor production in South Korea, and its activities include sale, technical and product-quality support, and marketing. The Showa Denko Group provides more than 20 kinds of high-purity gases. KSC imports high-purity gases from gas production bases in Japan and other Asian countries and sells them in South Korea, and also exports high-purity gases produced in South Korea to Asia and the United States. The Showa Denko Group operates integrated supply system of high-purity gases including filling up cylinders, shipping and distribution, collection of used cylinders, and analysis and assurance of product quality. Thus the Group manages its high-purity gas supply chain without independent dealers’ help. Therefore, it is one of the Group’s strong points that the Group’s direct selling system can rapidly respond to customers’ requests. This time, the Group decided to expand its distribution base in South Korea because it was an urgent need for the Group to strengthen the facility in Anseong-si in order not only to respond to rapidly growing demand for high-purity gases in South Korea but also to cope with the ongoing global logistics problem and the rapid increase in distribution cost.

While investment in the semiconductor industry is rapidly growing in many countries of the world, South Korean government is also giving strong support to the country’s semiconductor industry, and semiconductor market of South Korea continues expanding. High-purity gases for semiconductor production are used in circuit wiring process on the surface of semiconductor wafers (front-end process). The amount of high-purity gases used in semiconductor production is increasing rapidly because of the progress in miniaturization and three dimensional design of semiconductor integrated circuits, and the amount has been increasing at the growth rate higher than that of semiconductor wafer market. The Showa Denko Group has the leading share of the global etching-gas^※ market, and sales figures of the Group’s business to produce and sell high-purity gases for semiconductor production has been achieving more than 10% growth every year.

• ※ Etching gas is used in etching process, which is a process to carve fine grooves and holes on the surface of wafers in order to make up electronic circuits, etc.