Renesas Electronics Corporation was struck by a fire in the N3 Building (300mm line) of its Naka Factory (located in Hitachinaka, Ibaraki Prefecture) on March 19, 2021 at 2:47am.
The fire was extinguished on the same day and there no casualties to the employees and no damages to the building. However, Renesas said there was some damage to some of the utility equipment, including its pure water supply, the air conditioning system, as well as to some of the manufacturing equipment. The burned area is approximately 600m2, which is around 5% of the 12,000m2 clean room area of the first floor N3 Building, and the burned manufacturing equipment was 11 units, which is around 2% of the manufacturing equipment of the N3 Building.
Production at N3 Building (300mm wafers) has temporarily halted while the company cleans the interior of the clean room and procures replacements of the burned equipment.
Renesas aims to resume production within one month. The financial impact from halting the N3 Building production is approximately 17 billion yen per month.
In a press conference, company officials extended their apologies for the occurrence of the fire, the circumstances and the causes, as well as the outlook going forward.
“We would like to give our sincerest apologies to neighboring residents, customers, partner companies, relevant authorities and all those involved for the trouble the fire caused,” said Hidetoshi Shibata, President & CEO of Renesas. “In addition, we would like to express our gratitude for the fire department and those who partook in the extinguishing of the fire.”
The production at N2 Building (200mm line) and the WT Building (wafer testing) is operating as usual.
