- Business
- Sumco Corporation Sumco Corporation (TSE: 3436) manufactures and sells silicon wafers for the semiconductor industry worldwide. The company produces single crystal silicon ingots; polished wafers; annealed wafers; epitaxial wafers; junction isolated wafers; silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers; and reclaimed polished wafers, serving semiconductor manufacturers primarily in Japan, the United States, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Europe, and other international markets. Established on July 30, 1999, as a joint venture between Mitsubishi Materials Corporation and Sumitomo Metal Industries (formerly known as Sumitomo Mitsubishi Silicon Corp., with a name change to Sumco Corporation in August 2005), Sumco Corporation is headquartered at 1-2-1 Shibaura, Minato-ku, Tokyo 105-8634, Japan, and maintains major production facilities in Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, and the U.S. In recent developments, the company acquired Mitsubishi Polycrystalline Silicon America Corp. and the semiconductor polysilicon business from Mitsubishi Materials Corporation in May 2023, enabling in-house production of key raw materials such as semiconductor polysilicon and trichlorosilane to support vertical integration from raw materials to finished wafers. Sumco Corporation is actively restructuring operations, including consolidating 300mm wafer production for leading-edge applications like AI server chips, converting existing equipment for advanced wafers, reorganizing smaller wafer lines (200mm and below) for efficiency, and launching new plant facilities to meet projected demand growth of 800,000-1 million wafers per month by 2027; these efforts follow fiscal 2024 consolidated sales of 396.6 billion yen and ongoing investments in R&D for high-performance wafers amid market shifts toward AI-driven semiconductors.