Silicon wafer manufacturer Wacker AG (Munich) announced a reorganization of its manufacturing capacities. While the move is said to have no negative impact on the company's production capacities, it will lead to job cuts.
In the future, the company plans to assign certain wafer sizes to each of its production locations. Currently, all locations produce a mix of wafer sizes. The company's location in Freiberg (Saxony) will be responsible for 300-mm wafers while the company will concentrate its 200-mm production in Singapore.
The dwindling 150-mm wafer production quantities will be assigned to the company's Burghausen (Bavaria) campus where also the R&D activities will be located. A company spokesperson admitted that this boils down to the end of production at that location.
The move is a reaction to the current market situation, the company said. It will lead to some 800 redundancies. However, not all of these job cuts are associated to the wafer production at Wacker subsidiary Siltronic; the company at the same time announced similar moves for its silicone production. Since the Wacker's polysilicon production continues to expose strong growth rates, the company hopes it can avoid layoffs. "We continue to expand our polysilicon production and we will create several hundred jobs over the next years in this segment," the spokesperson said.
With its polysilicon production, Wacker addresses for customers in the photovoltaics business in the first place.
Besides the job disruptions, the company will have to do write-offs for manufacturing equipment at a value of about €120 million ($168 million).
Source: EETimes
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