Japan's Renesas Ibaraki plant shuts down due to earthquake
(Tokyo, 16th) Due to a 7.3-magnitude earthquake that occurred off the coast of Japan’s Fukushima area on the 13th local time, Japanese automotive chip manufacturer Renesas Electronics suspended its production at its plant in Ibaraki Prefecture, southern Fukushima Prefecture. In order to inspect its clean room, this decision may worsen the global shortage of automotive chips. Japan’s "NHK" reported that a 7.3-magnitude earthquake occurred in the Fukushima area of ​​Japan on the evening of the 13th and caused power outages in 950,000 households in East Japan. Renesas Electronics suspended its automotive chip factory in Ibaraki Prefecture after the earthquake to check the possibility For example, whether the clean room of the factory’s core facility is damaged. Although Renesas Electronics' Ibaraki plant was out of power due to the earthquake, it has now resumed power supply. In this regard, a Renesas spokesperson said that the factory’s current power supply is normal and all power equipment is in operation. However, as a precaution, the company has decided to cancel Sunday’s production in order to conduct a more detailed inspection of the clean room. She said it was inconvenient to comment on the resumption of production in this building because the staff had just started to inspect the clean room. Renesas Electronics is currently actively increasing the production of automotive wafers, and the Ibaraki plant is the automotive wafer production plant. As for Renesas’ Yonezawa Plant (Yamagata Prefecture) and Takasaki Plant (Gunma Prefecture), they continued to operate, and their buildings or equipment were not damaged. In addition, major companies with factories in the Fukushima area, including Nissan Motor, Toyota Motor and Hitachi, also stated that they did not suffer major damage in the earthquake.