Taiyo Nippon Sanso will build a semiconductor gas plant in China which is the fourth country for its group. A ground-breaking ceremony was held locally on June 28, and the completion of plant and the start of commercial operation will be in January 2019. Likewise in Korea, its local associates are proceeding with capital investments for specialty gases so that the group’s global production capacity can be reinforced.

The new plant will be built in the Yangzhou Chemical Industrial Complex, Jiangsu Province, China in which there is the head office of Taiyo Nippon Sanso Semiconductor Gases of local group company filling and selling silane gas. TNSC says, “We have so far established good relations with the Chemical Industrial Complex through the activities of Yangzhou Taiyo Nippon Sanso Semiconductor Gases, which made us procure easily the site and obtain smoothly the various approvals clearing the procedures required this time.”

The site has an area of 28,000 m2 with a total building space of 7,000m2 including the production facility, store and office. The product lineup of specialty gases will include B2H6 (diborane), CH3F(fluoromehtane), C4F6 (hexafluoro-1,3 butadiane) and SiH4 (silane). The plant will mainly produce doping and etching gases for memory or logic, but especially to catch up with the anticipated multi-layer (3D) trend of NAND-type flash memories from now on, there will be a great hike in demand for specialty gases for memories. The investment at this time is said to be responsive to such a trend.


In the new plant a complete system for specialty gas plant will be provided including synthesizing, purifying and mixing facilities together with alarm monitoring system, gas analyzing laboratory and cylinder disposition equipment for various gases. The gases to be produced in the plant will be sold in the Chinese market by Taiyo Nippon Sanso Specialty Gases (Shanghai) and to the overseas customers through the group companies’ sales network. In Korea, Matheson Gas Products Korea is making a new investment for the production of diborane and fluoromethane in Asan Plant, planning to start production in January 2018.

Although no concrete information of the supplying capacity of diborane has been disclosed, TNSC foresees a global demand for diborane will double comparing with the year of 2015. Since the investment has foreseen the expansion of demand, it seems that a substantial volume of the output capacity will be procured.


“Function to Promote Group’s Strategic Integration” formed in Shanghai

TNSC launched a concept of “Total Electronics” to unify the strategies of the group members at home and abroad handling semiconductor-related products in order to promote “Globalization” which is one of the key strategies posted in its mid-term business plan “Ortus Stage2.” In April 2017 Taiyo Nippon SC formed a function to promote group’s strategic integration in Shanghai base of TNSC (China) Investment Co.

China has been promoting to foster and nationalize the semiconductor industries with two policies of “Promotion Guideline of National IC Industries” posted in 2014 and “The 13th Five-year Plan 2016 to 2020” in 2016.


To this end, a further market expansion of the related materials can be expected in China and the newly formed function is most closely located to the base of demand.

With the addition of the above-mentioned base in China, TNSC Group’s production system of specialty gases will have been formed in four countries with 7 plants which includes the existing Japan Fine Products (Kawasaki, Oyama, Mie & Kyushu), Matheson/Tri Gas (New Jersey of US and Asa of Korea).

Although there are targeted customers in East Asia, USA and Singapore, the Shanghai business base intends to propose a unified strategy on customer support, product developments, logistics plan as group based on information by country from sales staff integrating the production condition of users, expansion plans, etc.