Taipei, June 24, 2010 (CENS)--Flooding orders are forcing Taiwan`s top-six chip assemblers to develop aggressive expansion plans which are to cost an estimated US$1.87 billion throughout this year.

The six assemblers are Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. (ASE), Siliconware Precision Industry Co., Ltd., Powertech Technology Inc., Siguard Microelectronics Co., Walton Advanced Engineering Inc., and UTAC (Taiwan) Corp.

Industry executives say that international integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) have increased outsourcing to pure chipmakers and assemblers since the second half of last year, when the global economy began reviving, to cut costs, adding that average contract visibility is three to six months to trigger aggressive expansion plans.

Siliconware has raised capital expenditure for this year while ASE has been busy with expansions of factories in Taiwan and China. Having acquired Spansion`s factory in Suzhou of China, Powertech is boosting capacity at in-house facilities and planning to acquire Kingston-held Payton Technology Inc. to cope with swarming orders from Elpida Memory, Toshiba and MediaTek.

Taiwan’s Top-6 Chip Assemblers and Their 2010 Expansion Plans

Company	Originally Set Capex Volume	Revised Volume	In NT Dollar Denomination
ASE	US$450-500M	US$600-700M	NT$19.5-28.8B
Siliconware	US$450M	US$600M	Over NT$19.5B
Powertech	US$300M	US$400M	NT$12B
Singuard	US$60M	US$90M	NT$2.9B
Walton	US$92M	US$154M	NT$5B
UTAC	US$56M	US$200M	NT$6.5B

Sources: the companies

(by Ken Liu)