Chapter 1109: Statement

In recent years, major manufacturers have rushed to log on to 6. The large-scale construction of the wafer fab Najiazhu, Fan Heng also expressed his concern and specifically asked Fan Wubing about the situation.

"This is a good thing. It's lively and can create a lot of job opportunities for the mainland. It also has a good promotion effect on cultivating skilled technical personnel." Fan Wubing said.

Fan Heng frowned and asked, "As far as I know, there are at least ten projects related to the wafer fab that are planned to be built. Does it mean that the market of Si really has such a large capacity?"

What Fan Heng is worried about is still the issue of market capacity. With such a large investment and the construction of so many wafer fabs, whether it can generate benefits is the key. After all, the biggest obstacle here is Taiwan’s control of TSMC and other manufacturers. There is a limit on the amount of investment. Because of this limit, when manufacturers in Taiwan encounter financial obstacles, they can spread their hands and say very innocently, look, it’s not that I don’t have the money to invest. There are restrictions imposed by the island authorities, so we cannot invest more funds.

For this reason, when this situation occurs, mainland manufacturers as joint venture partners will inevitably need to solve the problem of funding gaps, even as TSMC's announcement stated. They will build a wafer fab project solely. But who can guarantee that a half-finished project will not suddenly appear due to funding problems?

Once this happens, what kind of response will the local government make? Should we continue to support it with financial investment, or should we let it go and leave a regret?

Fan Heng considered these situations, so he asked his son to inquire carefully. After all, Fan Wubing was a real industry insider. The chip manufacturing factory under Fan's Investment Group was also one of the leading large enterprises in the country. No two at a time.

Regarding his father Fan Heng’s cross-examination, Fan Wubing couldn’t explain it clearly, so he just replied, “Judging from the current situation, what everyone values ​​​​is that the labor cost in the mainland is relatively low, even if someone like Fan Heng The production costs of high-wage companies like Taiwan are also much lower than in Taiwan, so when their gross profit can reach 50%, our net profit can reach at least 70% or more. "

"Is the chip manufacturing industry so profitable?!" Fan Heng said in surprise after hearing this.

It is obviously not difficult for Fan Heng to understand the concept of 70% net profit compared with 50% gross profit, which is why he was so surprised. Of course after he learned about this situation. There will also be a question, that is, once so many companies enter the mainland, can they still maintain such profitability?

"It depends on the market competition," Fan Wubing explained, "at present. Market demand is strong, but this is not absolute. After all, with the development of this market and other markets, as well as the improvement of new wafer manufacturing technology, how big is the market for eight-inch wafer fabs?

It's hard to tell yet. "

"What you said is as if you didn't say it." Fan Heng said after hearing this.

Fan Wubing shrugged his shoulders and said, "I can't explain things about the market clearly, and I'm not a god."

Of course Fan Heng asked Fan Wubing about this. That is to say, care about it. Although this is not the scope of his personal responsibility, he always needs to know some situations. After all, he is the executive deputy prime minister and sometimes often attends some activities. If you don't know about this, it will be a little bit. My son is so out of date.

From the current point of view, Shandong is the most enthusiastic about the construction of wafer fabs.

When industry insiders describe the layout of China's integrated circuit industry, a very vivid term is the swallow-shaped layout. The Yangtze River Delta is the head of the swallow, the Bohai Bay region and the Pearl River Delta are the wings, and the west is the tail.

In this swallow-shaped layout, the Yangtze River Delta at the head including Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Xijiang has initially formed a complete four-industry chain including development, design, chip manufacturing, packaging testing, and services, which is related to industrial development. The agglomeration effect of the environment is highlighted here.

In the Pearl River Delta, the design industry in Beijing, represented by ZTE, Huawei, Shenhu Guowei, Zhuhai Actions and other companies, is relatively developed. Relying on the huge market of the electronic information industry in the Pearl River Delta region, the integrated circuit industry in the Pearl River Delta has wings to take off.

But Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Liaoning and Rang. Compared with the overall industrial advantages of the Yangtze River Delta, the Bohai Bay Rim region formed in the east is obviously just a geographical concept and cannot yet support a powerful wing. Even in the capital, it only has some reputation.

Perhaps it is these reasons that have aroused Shandong's ambition to lead the wafer industry in the Bohai Rim region.

but. Without the presence of Thailand's Chia Tai Group, Shandong's desire for wafer manufacturing could only remain in the imagination stage. All they could do was wait, wait for technology, and wait for funds.

Shandong has many well-known electronic product companies, such as Haier, Hisense, Inspur, Aucma, Xiaoya, etc., which are a veritable electronics industry base. However, most of the chips these companies need rely on imports.

Although Fan Investment Group also has its own wafer industry manufacturing base, its own demand is very large. In addition, Fan Wubing has not rapidly expanded its production capacity, so the supply provided by Fan cannot fully meet the domestic demand. needs of electronics companies.

It is precisely because of this that Thailand's Chia Tai Group realized that this was a huge business opportunity, so it proposed to the relevant parties in Shandong that the two parties cooperate to build a wafer fab. As a result, the two parties naturally hit it off.

As a result, with interests as the link, a foreign investment alliance was formed instantly. Taiwan Milo will be mainly responsible for providing support in integrated circuit design, production technology and other aspects. South Korea's Hyundai will provide advanced production equipment, technology, technology and management, etc., and Thailand CP Group provided partial financial support.

But even in Shandong, some experts don't have much hope that Qingdao will build an eight-inch wafer project. In their view, it is very difficult and difficult for Qingdao to build an eight-inch wafer project.

Come

Now, whether it is eight-inch wafer projects in Beijing, Shanghai or Shenzhen, they are all in a state of loss, and Qingdao will inevitably make the same mistake again. The wafer project has a high technical content and requires a good industrial atmosphere, such as the connection of the upstream and downstream industrial chains, which Qingdao does not have.

The wafer industry requires three elements: team, funding, and atmosphere. Qingdao has no advantages in these aspects. It is not as good as Jinan, because there is now a four-inch wafer factory under the Jinan Semiconductor Research Institute, and the technical staff have been trained. Six inches should be fine.

In addition, wafer production requires a large amount of nitrogen, which is found in steel plants. Jinan High-tech Zone is far away from Jinan Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. "It's easy to solve this problem."

Although Qingdao is an electronic product base, these are not necessarily the natural customer base of Qingdao's future wafer fabs, because in the end, which products these potential customers choose will depend on the market. Quality and price are the most fundamental. Qingdao's wafer fabs There is no guarantee that the round factory will have a comparative advantage in these two aspects.

Following this line of thinking, another idea emerged in Shandong, which is that Jinan will also compete with Qingdao to develop its own wafer industry.

Such a conclusion obviously came out of the competition for political achievements, but Jinan's thinking is also very strange. They believe that they should not follow the trend of eight-inch wafers now, and should choose six-inch as a breakthrough based on the actual situation.

Experts in Jinan said that because Jinan now has a four-inch wafer production line in the economic development zone itself, the technology is very mature and can transition to six inches relatively smoothly. According to their calculations, it is now possible to buy an old six-inch wafer production line at a cost of about 20 million yuan. Moreover, six-inch wafers are still in great market demand and are very suitable for production in Jinan.

When Fan Wubing heard the news. The first feeling is that there must be something fishy in this. This statement is more like public opinion propaganda for a certain action. How can a six-inch production line have more market prospects than an eight-inch one? This is sheer nonsense. It’s just enough to deceive a layman who doesn’t understand. It’s simply untenable.

In fact, this is exactly what happened next.

It has been reported that Jinan High-tech Zone has signed a US$200 million agreement with Taiwan Huahui Holdings Co., Ltd. Huahui will invest US$200 million to build a wafer fab in the High-tech Zone. The short-term goal is six inches, and the long-term plan is Eight inches.

However, when the media talked about this matter with relevant people in Jinan High-tech Zone, they all kept it secret and refused to get involved too much.

Fan Wubing was more interested in this, so he asked Fan's people there to inquire carefully. Sure enough, some clues emerged. It turned out that some young people learned that Jinan might have the idea of ​​​​competing with Qingdao and entering into the wafer fab project. He improvised a fictitious company called Hua Hui, hoping to win the business. According to the speculation of the parties in Jinan, this group of people had a second-hand six-inch wafer production line that they wanted to sell to Jinan at a high price. Its actual value could not be worth US$200 million.

With such a large investment and a seriously unequal production line, what's the trick here? Obviously you can tell without asking.

In fact, according to more and more intelligence. This time, both in terms of policy and funding. Or the Taiwanese businessmen who are actively cooperating to enter the mainland market are all motivated. Behind these large projects, there are some relatively large interest groups manipulating them, and there are also several government agencies hidden among them. Control the situation behind the scenes.

After Fan Wubing learned about this situation. Even more unwilling to intervene, after all, a bachelor is not a good person to make money, but a hero is better, and the sense of justice is always overflowing, but it is really not worth it to cause anger and resentment because of this matter.

In fact, he is better able to understand the thoughts of these people, because the election is about to change, and if he doesn't take advantage of the opportunity to speak now, he can make some money for retirement. After stepping down, life will not be easy. This era is the era of money. If you don't have money, people will look down on you, especially those in the government who are very anxious. If we can't catch the last train, there will be no hope for our happy days in the future.

In a word, power cannot always be in one's own hands, but money can really benefit future generations. Everyone has already thought clearly about this.

Fan Wubing has thought about it very clearly. Although the major electronic companies are coming fiercely, they still feel a little uneasy because they don't know what Fan's actions will be and what targeted moves he will take.

Some people suspected that Fanshi already had the strength to put the 12-inch wafer production technology into production, but they were always worried. The main reason was to fully exert the benefits of the 8-inch wafer production line. After all, it costs a lot of money to build a production line, and Fan Wubing could not squander it.

However, Fanshi Investment Group has never made a positive statement on this issue. The company's executives are even more secretive about this issue and are unwilling to make a clear statement. Therefore, the media generally doubts about the latest technology of Fanshi Investment Group. There are even many media speculations that Fanshi's technology is not as advanced as they advertise. It is just the result of exchanging interests with some foreign chip companies, which has led to the current 8-inch wafer production line.

In response to this issue, Fan Wubing made some explanations when he was interviewed by CCTV reporters. He said that Fanshi Investment Group did not rely on technology exchange to achieve its current achievements. In the chip manufacturing industry, Fanshi has its own independent intellectual property research team, and its design and production capabilities are also excellent. The 8-inch production line has achieved complete independent manufacturing.

Regarding the question of 12-inch wafer production technology, he also said that his technical team has been working tirelessly for this. If there is good news, he will definitely announce it to everyone as soon as possible. At the same time, he also explained some of the obstacles that Fanshi is currently facing. After all, it is not easy to develop a new 12-inch wafer production line. Fanshi started relatively late in this industry. Whether in terms of qualifications or technical accumulation, there is a big gap with Taiwan's electronic manufacturers.

"Although we face many obstacles. At the same time, we will encounter more competitors in the manufacturing of eight-inch wafers, but as a large international group, Fanshi will not give up its efforts in this regard. This is certain." Fan Wubing told CCTV reporters.

Just after Fan Wubing made his statement to CCTV reporters, the media noticed another detail, that is, Wang Rongchang, a Taiwanese businessman who cooperated with Fan Wubing, had sold his equity in Fanshi's chip manufacturing company and turned to other fields.

This signal made many people feel that although Fan Wubing said that he would continue to work hard in wafer manufacturing, Fanshi obviously did not make a breakthrough in the manufacturing of 12-inch wafers. Otherwise, Wang Rongchang would not have resolutely chosen to launch it.

In this way, those who originally had concerns were immediately relieved.