SEMICON Japan 2022 (sponsored by SEMI) was held in the Tokyo Big Sight for three days from December 14 to 16, 2022. Posting the theme of “Change the Future/Future will Change,” there were a total of 1,677 participants of semiconductor and electronics manufacturers, organizations and municipalities exhibited including electronic packaging and substrate implementing companies in the exhibition site.

The gas-related companies in the booth included Tomoe Shokai, Toyoko Kagaku, Takachiho Trading, Osaka Gas Liquid, Fujikin, Kitz SCT, Value Impact, Horiba Stec, KOFLOC, Riken Keiki, New Cosmos Electric, Nagano Keiki, Yutaka, Nippon Seisen, Pureron Japan Kanken-Techno and Nishimura Chemitech.

Looking at the production field, the demand for mainly memories like NAND and DRAM has been in a declining trend.
It seems to have been greatly affected by the world-wide inflation, the decreased demand for smart phones caused by the lockdown in China and the decreased delivery of personal computers due to the remote work demand rebounded by the Covid19.

Forecast in investment in data centers is also unexpected. In compliance with the movement, memory manufacturers like Kioxia and Micron have made out their policy to reduce production aiming to adjust the production after the autumn of 2022.
According to SEMI, it is anticipated that the annual sales of DRAM out of the semiconductor production devices will decrease by 10% amounting to $14.3 billion and by 4% of NAND amounting to $19.0 billion in 2022. Decreases are also anticipated also in 2023 with the former by 25% and the latter by 36%. The same situation is forecasted to last until the autumn of 2023 at the earliest affecting the delivery of gases. Inevitable impact on gas shipments.

On the other hand, however, the construction of new plants of semiconductor are booming over the world. According to SEMI, the construction of new semiconductor plants started in 2022 marked record-high 33 locations thanks to the various factors like expanded demand for semiconductor for car or high-efficiency counting or from the geopolitics viewpoint.

In 2023, 28 more plants are scheduled to start. SEMI counts more than $500 billion altogether from 2021 to 2023.

Furthermore, the world sales amount of the production equipment in 2022 is also estimated to increase by 5.9% than last year amounting to a record-high figure of 108.5 billion.

The planned constructions of the plants in Japan in 2023 or later seems to include Kioxia Kitagami Fab 2,Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing in Kumamoto (JASM), Rapidus, Sony Kumamoto New Plant and the expansion of Micron Memory Japan Higashi Hiroshima.

Although some plans have been postponed due to the influence of memory market, the related equipment manufacturers are planning to upgrade their inventory preparations and expand the production capacity expecting coming increases in demand.