Recovery work at Mitsubishi Gas Chemical's (MGC) Fukushima facility is progressing more quickly than expected, sources at Taiwan-based chip packaging and testing houses have claimed. The major producer of bismaleimide-triazine (BT) resin is expected to restore production to pre-earthquake levels as early as May, the sources revealed.
But according to MGC's most recent update, issued on March 22, its manufacturing site in Nishishirakawa-gun, Fukushima Prefecture, will start partial production in early April. The company has not disclosed a time-frame for the site's full resumption.
MGC accounts for about 80% of the world's BT resin supply, the sources indicated. A prolonged shutdown of its factories in Japan due to the recent earthquake would cause bottlenecks in the worldwide IC assembly industry supply chain, the sources said.
In other news, IC packagers Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE) and Siliconware Precision Industries (SPIL) have set up crisis centers to search for all possible alternative sources of supply, amid concerns that disrupted deliveries of main raw materials from Japan may affect their production, the sources said.