Samsung halts chip production at South Korea plant due to power outage

Following a minute-long blackout on Tuesday afternoon, Samsung Electronics partly halted some semiconductor production at its Hwaseong chip complex in South Korea.

 

The company said in a statement on Wednesday that some DRAM and NAND flash chip production lines were stopped after electricity was cut due to a problem with a regional power transmission cable, and a full recovery is expected in about two to three days.  Yonhap reported earlier on Tuesday, citing industry sources.

 

Though the extent of the losses is still under investigation, a source with direct knowledge of the matter cited that the incident has likely to have caused millions of dollars in losses. There was however no major damage.

 

The memory chip maker meanwhile is inspecting the production lines for a restart.

 

The incident could help curb the increase of Samsung Electronics’ large chip inventory.

 

A similar incident was also reported at Samsung’s Pyeongtaek chip plant back in 2018 when a half an hour power outage resulted in estimated losses of about 50 billion won ($43.32 million).